How do you define good?
As an atheist by practice and agnostic by believe how can I define whats good from evil?
I have had this question for a long time, but only recently that I gave it serious thought. So I decide to build my own set of rules and values, this is my first attempt and I will need your help, so where should I begin? What question should I make?
I have had this question for a long time, but only recently that I gave it serious thought. So I decide to build my own set of rules and values, this is my first attempt and I will need your help, so where should I begin? What question should I make?
Comments (221)
What, assuming you are like most people, would you not like done to you, and why? What has humanity throughout thousands of years lived and fought wars and died to prevent? And on the other hand, to preserve? These are your starting points.
(Note: I will likely catch some flack for implying an intrinsic connection between ethics and human history/evolution. Let's instead use "desire" or "widely-held will" of humanity. Many human efforts and wars were to simply prolong an existing state of affairs, whether or not that state of affairs is based on "goodness" or "evil" ie. protecting a society propped up solely through perpetual conquest and exploitation of other innocent people, for example. With that exception, things like safety and predictable production of goods. Things that contribute to an environment that facilitates the greatest flourishing of human potential that minimizes things such as suffering, strife, crime, unpredictable violence, existential dread, etc.)
Or maybe just Humeans avoid it. Ethicists who do not use the word or concept 'good' are probably not doing ethics at all.
But how can we define something inhumane or unethical if we do not have bad/evil establish?
Quoting Outlander Thanks for your insights they were of great help, I have a lot to think
Inhumane is an absolute. That which is detrimental to or grossly inconsiderate of a human person. A human person being an intelligent albeit vulnerable organism that can experience and (generally) has a desire to avoid pain while seeking contentment, comradery, and purpose. That which denies or deprives the humanity and perceived natural rights of a human person.
Unethical is somewhat also of an absolute. That which directly or indirectly denies or deprives a human person the rights and dignities granted to personhood. Or causes something to that affect for sentient beings ie. chopping down a rain forest or over-fishing a species to extinction or near-extinction. I suppose you could say ethics is like humaneness but covers all that is sentient or can directly or indirectly affect that which is sentient.
More objective absolutes such as the above are often used in favor of "evil". They are synonymous, however. To most, at least.
How can we defined something ethical or unethical if not by a set of rules?
Do you have your own set of rules? Or do you follow a already establish set?
Try: What is the purpose of defining good? That is, Why do I need to make this distinction?
To acknowledge that some things are good and some things are bad is to exercise judgment. Why do you want to exercise judgment? Why do other people?
I would start with: which good - personal or social?
Personal good is whatever contributes the individual's continued survival, welfare and happiness.
Social good is whatever contributes to the well-being of the community.
Very often, these two kinds of good are in conflict, which is why societies establish rules that apply to everyone - whether a religious moral code or a secular code of ethics. Both can be enacted as laws. In a theocracy, the religious one is applied across the board; in a secular state, laws are devised for the benefit of the ruling elite, the polity or the dominant faction.
The confusion begins when religious precepts bleed into the legal code of a nominally secular nation and are imposed on both the religious, who may reject the secular aspects and the non-religious, who resent being constrained by dogma.
A good dog is a dog that obeys its master. So you might be asking what constitutes a good human. Something different, I think, but in saying that, and assuming you agree, we already know that a good human has a relation to other humans that is not characterised by command and obedience, but in a more equal and perhaps mutual way.
But perhaps that isn't your question. Perhaps you want to say simply that a good human is one that performs good acts. Then there is a difficulty that a good plumber performs different acts than a good footballer.
But however it is, the way to proceed is not to make out that being an atheist prevents you from ascribing any meaning to a commonplace word. Atheists and the religious alike have to live in the world somehow, and have to decide what they think it good to do. and when you have decided that you are in that position along with the rest of us, we can start to exchange ideas on what we think it good to do, and see if there is any common ground.
This will always be contested space and I have never been too much concerned by notions of good or bad. It's slippery and imprecise. I generally hold that to deliberately cause or allow suffering is bad and to work to minimise suffering or end it is good. How we measure this and how we define suffering is where the fun begins. There are a range of foundations for defining the good - from that which promotes human flourishing to those who argue that good is contextually constructed - a product of human preferences and emotions.
Religious people naturally believe such rights are divine, and even non-religious people nod to a similar concept (albeit divorced of any actual divinity) in the common usage of "God-given rights". What's relevant is not who or what granted it, but who or what enforces it. Which at the time is every non-isolationist nation who partakes in modern society and the free trade and travel that comes with.
To avoid a non-answer, I suppose in pragmatic terms it is granted (and more importantly, enforced) by the regional government. Not to say out of sheer good will or higher understanding, mind you, often for the reasons mentioned (trade, travel, inclusion and to no lesser degree, protection with/by the rest of the world). A bit of a shaky foundation in any sort of objective sense, sure. But nonetheless the way of the modern age. It's "what we have to work with". Wasn't always that way, and for all we know might not always be. But for now, it's reality. No different for all intents and purposes than say, gravity. Sure, people commit crimes and violate the law, some even get away with it. But more so than not, the rights and dignities of persons are enshrined with notable attempts to protect such in stable, developed countries.
I suppose it can be noted, from a strictly worldly view, it's ultimately a human construct, no different than declaring a particular color "the best color" and enshrining such a judgement as law of the land. So it's a bit poky, given thorough philosophical scrutiny, admittedly. Basically, the majority of people got together and decided "You know, life is better without everyone running around killing everyone" and made such a perspective into law. Unless you are chained to a floor or wearing an explosive neck collar that will detonate upon leaving whatever country you're in, you willfully accept and participate in the base, most fundamental laws of that society, those laws being along the lines of human rights to life and dignity. You must. Otherwise you will be imprisoned or penalized upon being found guilty of acting in such a manner that violates these laws, or so the law prescribes.
Quoting Matias Isoo
Therein lies the debate. What is good? What is ethical? Why? Who says so? Absent of any sort of theistic source, such concepts seem to logically fall into the category of subjectivity. Along the lines of "it is because we say it is", which admittedly leaves much to be desired for the objectivity seeker. De facto understanding and social norms seem to emerge as a sort of "guidance" (what makes me go "ouch" will make another person go "ouch", we have laws that say you cannot make another person go "ouch" for that is despised and socially-viewed as criminality by the majority).
None of that is very satisfying to the person seeking a concrete non-theistic answer, of course. So, the options appear to be either "good and ethical does not exist, except as opinions, which are ultimately no more correct or incorrect or right or wrong than the next" or "goodness and ethics are based on the will of humanity writ-large supported by objective things such as what is harmful or destructive to human beings or human societies versus what is pleasing and beneficial to them".
Personally, I follow the law, as I live in a modern, developed society that, at least on paper, purports to protect the dignity and rights of all human persons coupled with my personal intuition of what feels right or wrong based on empathy (ie. What if that person were me? How would I like to be treated? Etc.)
Be advised however, I've been reprimanded, several times, for my purporting to link "ethics" with "human nature" or "evolution". Apparently, that's an unsound belief not rooted in any sort of intrinsic or objective reality. Enslavement of persons, for example, was once a social norm. Justified by things such as "another empire would have just killed them" or "they wouldn't have survived on their own" or "our slaves live better lives than most nobles of Empire B, we did them a favor helping them avoid the inevitable fate of enslavement by Empire B whose slaves are physically abused for pleasure, whereas ours are not", etc. While any number of those claims may not only have been true but factual as far as a better outcome for the enslaved, humanity has evolved to do "one better" and eliminate slavery altogether (for the most part, human trafficking is very much alive and well).
Basically, I'm just calling it how I see it. With the belief that while I may not be satisfactorily answering all of your questions, I may be offering some sort of guidance toward the path that does contain, or will lead you to, the answers you seek. At least, I'm hopeful of such.
Good luck, my friend! Ethics is an interesting topic indeed.
If I could do it over again, then this is what I would advise my younger self (in this order):
1. What is the concept of good? What does that refer to?
2. What would a kind of good that is objective be (in principle)?
3. Are there any such objective goods? Viz., is there anything that is objectively good?
4. If there are no objective goods, then what would a non-objective good be like (in principle)?
5. What is morality? What is that the study of?
6. What kinds of goods, be it objective or non-objective, would be morally relevant?
7. How should one behave in such a manner as to abide by what is morally good?
8. How should we, as a society, pragmatically setup our institutions to best establish and preserve what is morally good?
My biggest advice is: dont skip steps. It is really enticing and easy to skip steps, but it will ruin your ethical theory. Most people want to start with the cool and interesting thought experiments: dont do thatbuild your way up.
You did more than enough, you open,my eyes to a lot of new ideas
thanks my friend
Good doesnt have a definition, but if you think you can build your own set of rules, you must already have an idea of what good will be.
I suspect, when you go about building a set of rules, youll find youre only discovering them.
Where should you begin, then?
Stop asking where to begin.
Begin at looking what brings happiness. Happiness not just for you, but for the others who are involved as well. The idea is from Aristotle. Read Ethics by Aristotle.
He says, the purpose of human life is happiness. What makes us happy? Not just one party, but the other party involved. Whatever makes and brings happiness to all parties is Good, according to him.
Sometimes it is tricky to make everyone happy. In that case, everyone has to meet in the mid point where they find happiness. Achieving that, is Good.
If your loved one lost eyes, and lost sight. You give him / her your eyes sounds doing good. But you lose your sight. That is good for him / her, but it is not good for you. The mid point is not met. It is NOT Good.
You must rather take him / her to the eye doctor to repair the eye to regain the sight. If it worked, it is good for him / her (due to regaining the sight), and it is good for you (you helped your loved one to regain the sight albeit with some expense). The mid point is met. That was Good.
Another usage of 'good', which you may or may not find in a dictionary, but which I suggest is a definition which describes usage is 'that which is valued'. For example "Democracy is good" means "democracy is valuable"
There comes a point where theory takes over from definition. People disgaree, for example, about whether what is good is always relative to a point of view. Some would argue, "Democracy is good" has no meaning without an explicit or implicit point of view, whereas "I value democracy, democracy is good for me" does have meaning because it specifies a point of view.
Good observation!
So, think of a definition that covers all of its uses. Something like: that which most closely approaches a preconceived standard. What is a cake supposed to be? What makes a cake fail in that requirement; what makes it succeed? In what context is the comparison made? When one is parched in a desert, and you're offered an excellent cake, you cannot value it - or evaluate it.
Good is always relative to something.
Just picture who you want to be and what kind of environment you want to be in 5 years from now. You're like an arrow shooting through time. Good is whatever is conducive to the arrow's path toward your vision. Evil is whatever makes the arrow deviate down some other path. As long as your goal is in keeping with deeper imperatives, and not frivolous bullshit, it will be relatively easy, though trials and torments are part of any path.
Good and evil are just ideas you use to keep the vision clear in your mind. They don't serve any other purpose.
Having a good heart is having a heart filled with opportunity to create things that benefit you. You would have purpose, you would have opportunities to create a beneficent circumstance.
No, they absolutely do not. All ethicists talk fundamentally in terms of what is good, bad, immoral, moral, etc. What you seemed to do here, is migrate the discussion immediately in favor of moral anti-realism; when the OP is asking more generically about ethics.
What you described here is pyschology, not ethics. What one likes doesnt matter when one is trying to decipher what the concept of good is: either there such a think as being good or there isntwho cares if you like it? Even in the case of moral anti-realism, their concepts of good are themselves objective (albeit they refer to something non-objective).
This seems to put the OP in a box that isnt needed though: why start with personal and social goods? Why not start with what it would mean for something to be good in the first place?
So it is good, then, for me to kill an innocent person to ensure my survival? That would be a personal good?
So it is good, then, for me to avoid my duties to my children because it makes me happier?
So it is good for society, then, to torture one person in order to ensure its own survival?
These definitions dont accurately reflect what either an individual nor social good would be.
That doesn't sound like 'good' that sounds more like narcissism. If everything revolves around you and 'opportunities' and what 'benefits you', where does the good come in?
This sounds like a Moorean intuition of goodness, am I right? (:
Why would they do that? They need to first understanding what it means for something to be good, then explore what is good. You are having them skip vital steps here.
(PS: the Nichomachean and Eudemian Ethics are good reads indeed: no disagreement there).
That's just another way of saying there is no actual goodness and badness; because you defined it as whatever suits a person's own non-objective dispositions. My biggest complaint is not that you are siding with moral anti-realism, but that the OP wants to know where to start and this makes them think, if they accepted it, that they should collapse ethics into pyschology. They need to explore, first, what goodness even is: not go on a psychological quest.
This is also why, as a side note, I call moral anti-realism only ethics insofar as it is its negation.
I can't see a way to 'defining' good as anything other than a personal subjective concept. OR some teleological thing - i.e, "Good in order to achieve..." or "good in order to avoid.." in whatever scenario.
Quoting Bob Ross
That's an interesting point, but i think is entirely inapt. Moral anti-realism is literally a species of ethical thought as to "what one ought to do". It just doesn't demand a universal answer.
I caught that too. Was going to edit to reflect what I meant at the time: "The large majority of philosophers produce non-religious works and, in my opinion, 'evil' is a categorically religious construct better (and often) substituted (or otherwise equated) with more pragmatic and secular wording such as 'inhumane' or 'unethical'." You are correct. Honestly thought this thread would've been moved to the Lounge by now. Apologies. :smile:
Quoting Bob Ross
This is correct, also. I emboldened the part that highlights what muddles the waters for me when it comes to the subject. Perhaps it may help someone similar. My understanding being: one 'likes' not suffering, suffering is virtually in de facto agreement by everyone to be unethical, ergo, the relationship between human ethics and what the subject of the whole matter's preferences are (what is liked, what is disliked, the fact inflicting suffering is unethical, etc.) is not without noting. It appears my focus is on human-centric ethics or ethics in sole relation to humanity as opposed to a larger "ultimate" Good that would be the same whether humanity exists or not.
You could say it's Beyond Good and Evil, yea.
Quoting Bob Ross
The OP has a starting place. He or she is an atheist.
Good is not an entity itself. Good is a quality. At closest Good could be happiness, but it is not exactly the same.
This is if you're interested for an argument and breakdown. In short: Existence. In long? Existences that keep a level of quantitative existence at a set level, or higher. Bad existences would decrease the overall quantitative existence. For example, matter being completely destroyed would be evil. But an atom breaking into electrons, that then interact with other atoms to create something more than an atom alone, is a greater existence and therefore more good.
Taken in human existence, it is about how we exist and interact with others. Do we allow the same existence? Do we allow new interactions, inventions, ideas, and existences? Then we are good. Do we murder, steal, inhibit creativity, destroy with abandon, and only allow a few select existences to flourish? Then we are evil.
This is a good question. We can take it a step further by asking how we would know that we have the correct definition of "good". supose that you are given an answer, say "What is good is what is natural". How would you go about checking to see if this definition is correct?
You might decide that you could go about collecting all the things that are natural, and seeing if they are good. Seems simple enough.
But how are you to decide if they are good or not? Well, if you take the definition to be true, then everything that is natural will by that very fact be good. And this only means that you have no way of checking if "What is good is what is natural" is right or wrong. Take a cup of tea, and if it is natural then it is good, and that's an end to the discussion.
And if you think that it makes sense to ask if "What is good is what is natural", then you must have a way of checking if something is good that is different to checking that it is natural. That is, there must be a difference between checking if something is good and checking if it is natural.
So given the definition "What is good is what is natural", you either must think that there is no way to check that this definition is true, or you must think that being good is something different to being natural.
And this same argument goes for any definition you might offer.
So from this we might conclude that we already know what is good and what is not, even though we may not be able to give an explicit definition.
This is in outline an argument presented by G. E. Moore, in his book Principia Ethica, the central locus of much of ethics. It's a good starting question.
Quoting Matias Isoo
You don't get to do otherwise, since in order to choose amongst the rules and values given by others, you must already have you some set of values. This applies even to those who think they have chosen to follow the will of god...
Hope this helps. Read widely and don't commit yourself to any particular view too readily.
Dunno about Moore. The title asks for something to be said about good, not about what is good, not how it is good, not goodness.
So, one might assume that whatever the Good is, it is sought for its own sake and that it must be a [I]principle[/I] realized unequally in a disparate multitude of particulars (e.g. saddle making, painting, argument, health, etc.). One might also assume that other things are sought in virtue of the degree to which the perfect, possess, or participate in this principle.
Plato's image is of the Good as a light by which we see. I think this works in some ways. We can imagine a very bright spotlight, too bright for us to look directly at perhaps. But between us and the light are a vast multitude of variously colored panes of glass through which the light passes, as well as different sorts of mirrors reflecting the light, and all sorts of things lit by the light, which hang from the ceiling.
Depending on how the light travels to us, how we stand and turn our heads or move about, the objects hanging from the ceiling might look very different as refracted through the intervening panes and mirrors. The objects we see are of different sorts, just as the good of a "good car" is different from the good of a "good rifle." And some panes of glass we look at the objects through might be tinted dark, such that very little light gets through, whereas others might be clearer, allowing more of the light to reach us. Some of the things we can see might be larger, as "good health" is more relevant than "a good pen." Some of the mirrors might be fun house mirrors that manage to distort the light, so that we are confused about what we see. Small things might appear large, and large things small. In some cases, we might mistake the brightness of a mirror with the source of the light itself, just as people thought the Moon was the source of its own light for millennia.
Perhaps behind all the things hanging from the ceiling there are many different lights? But I should think just one.
I don't understand how the Good would be sought for its own sake. Does this imply, as many used to believe, that goodness is a kind of transcendental, independent of contexts and intersubjective agreements?
Seems to me that goodness varies greatly over time. While I don't think I'm a total relativist, I don't see how we can move beyond the culturally located nature of goodness. I get that many of us believe in moral progress and argue for various positions (which implies better and worse morality) but is it any more than just pragmatically trying to usher in our preferred forms of social order?
I assume that you adhere to some form of Platonism and view moral truths as existing beyond human experience?
I did.
Quoting Vera Mont
Once these questions are answered, you can go on to which kind of good you want explore.
'Start with' was a poor choice of words.
Quoting Bob Ross
In some situations, yes, and that's exactly what some people do, and that is where it comes into direct conflict with the social good. Hence the need to distinguish the one from the other.
Quoting Bob Ross
That, too, is the chosen path of many people.
Quoting Bob Ross
Most societies, at some level, think so - and do. Quoting Bob Ross
According to a particular set of values.
Quoting Vera Mont
It can, but it need not. However, if the Good was properly "transcedent," thenby definitionit cannot be absent from that which it transcends (e.g. the contexts of intersubjective agreements).
Likewise, if the Good is absolute, then it is not merely "reality as set apart from appearances," but is rather inclusive of reality [I]and[/I] appearances. Appearances are [I]really[/I] appearances, and how a thing appears is part of the absolute context. This is why the Good cannot be a point on Plato's divided line, it relates to the whole. But appearances aren't independent of what they are appearances of, and whatever appears good must really appear good in some sense.
At any rate, it is one thing to say that the Good is filtered through or shaped by intersubjective agreements, it would be quite another to say that it is "intersubjective agreements all the way down," or not explicable in terms of [I]anything[/I] other than such agreements. Since notions of Goodness apply seemingly everywhere, we might think it is an extremely general principle.
Aristotle, for instance, thinks happiness transcends one's own lifespan. If, for instance, one has lived a life centered around one's family, and one dies trying to save them from a flood, and yet they nonetheless end up drowning later that day, then this is not a "happy ending." "Count no man happy until he be dead," is the famous saying here (actually from Solon), but the Bible has its own version, Sirach 11:28:
[I]
Call no one happy before his death;
a man will be known through his children.[/I]
Why prefer some forms of social order over others? Presumably because we think they are truly better. Pragmatism only makes sense if one has an aim in the first place.
What matters to you? If defining things matters to you why?
Well in my opinion you should start with the realization that "good" ( and therefore "evil" as well) is a subjective descriptor. Thus good, to you, is whatever you deem it to be. Societies also decide what the common good is for the community.
Of course there are certain cases where the good option is almost universally agreed upon and many fall into the trap of concluding that "good" is therefore objective. Don't make that error as there are many more areas where there is no consensus on the good option whatsoever.
Would this mean, then, that true evil is impossible, per Law of Conservation of Mass?
Quoting Philosophim
Does that mean if we disallow cruel or violent (albeit new) interactions, inventions, ideas, and existences we are evil? Surely not?
--
Example. Going with the premise. Say, in the not too distant future, man has advanced in warfare and weaponry birthing the existence of a bomb whose yield would destroy the entire planet. Say it is somehow known, this weapon would inevitably be used. Would a hypothetical contagion that wipes out 99.9% of life on Earth thus preventing said weapon from ever being used not be 'good' in such a scenario under the above circumstances? According to this premise, it would, as it prevents a larger decrease in quantitative existence. Or wouldn't it?
Maybe. We're still left with the vexed act of interpreting what constitutes 'flourishing' and who gets to be a citizen in that model. For instance, does it fully include women? (Not looking for an answer to this)
On this one, I think I prefer Sam Harris' simplistic adaptation of Aristotle, which puts 'wellbeing' at the centre. Subject to the similar definitional and operational problems.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
No, in my case because they please me and comport with my values. And I like predictability. Morality can greatly assist us to make plans.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Can we demonstrate that this is not the case? Circular reasoning like this seems unavoidable throughout human experience. After all we use logic to prove logic. Isn't the very idea that - an action is morally right if it maximizes flourishing because maximising flourishing is what defines morality - circular?
Some might say that humans, as social, tribal animals have evolved behaviours (norms, codes) which benefit groups. Don't fuck your sister's husband, don't steal stuff and don't kill - would make sense in terms of the continuity and thriving of the tribe. But there are some tribes that don't have the injunction against stealing because there's no private property in their culture.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, I get it - the usual arguments against relativism, which I have put up myself elsewhere. I may start a thread on nuanced relativism. I'm not necessarily a proponent, just an admirer...
I am not sure 'good' means much without context and milieu. I'm not sure this is a resolvable matter. Relativism doesn't have to argue that all moral claims are equal, just that their status depends on the given social, cultural and personal context.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This may be true about the universe's real age - if age even has meaning at this level. But I think the idea that the universe is the product of a singularity at a particular time is an intersubjective agreement held by certain parts of the scientific community. Is it not possible that one of those fabled paradigm shifts (so 20th century) might uncover a different cause and timeframe sometime?
But the age of the universe and how viruses work are surely of a different category to whether something is inherently good or bad.
For all practical intents and purposes, "good" is whatever those in a position of more power than you believe is "good".
My stance is that nobody ought negate their own good future by helping others for nothing in return, even if that something is small like positive attention or inclusion in the product of that endeavour.
Good is a positive outcome, whether that be by way of having a heart filled with beneficent opportunity or a mind apt with intelligence that can manage a good progression. Something you can truly say 'that was good', or 'I've got good chances'.
It means that the worst case evil scenario is impossible IF we are correct about the Conservation of Mass. Evil and good are relative quantifications. Meaning we can still have some serious evil like human life being wiped out.
Quoting Outlander
Lets translate it to, "Does that mean if we disallow evil interactions we are evil?" No. What we have to be careful is what we ascribe as 'evil'. For example, what if I say, "Trans women are not actual women?" Some might consider that idea cruel. Objectively though, its simply a thought that is needed to have a conversation. "Killing all trans people" is objectively evil, but talking about them is not. Even someone saying, "We should kill all trans people" is not necessarily evil, just repugnant. But if they kept those feelings to themselves, we wouldn't know about it and have the attempt to change their mind to be better.
An evil interaction is defined as something that lowers the totality of existence overall. There's no real benefit to it. For example, I decide to nuke a city for fun. The existence of one person's fun is objectively much less than the destruction of an entire city and its people, just from the basic standpoint of you are removing the fun from potentially thousands of people vs one.
Quoting Outlander
Correct. But you know what would be even better? Having humanity not use the weapon and they all live. We can invent strange and horrific scenarios, but just because we get a better outcome in a very specific set of circumstances it does not eliminate that there are potentially better solutions if we expand the totality of the thought experiment to what is more realistic.
Even in this scenario, the optimal choices would be to either destroy the weapon, or convince the side that would use it to not do so. The optimal choice in almost all circumstances is to allow the most existence in harmony with other existences as much as possible.
How can one determine what is good without understanding what it would mean for something to be good in the first place? Isn't that putting the cart before the horse?
I was talking about the concept of good, and of which one must have an understanding of before they can accurately assess what can be predicated to have it. This is a classic mistake that Moore rightly points out: ethics starts not with what is good, but what goodness even refers to---whereas, most people do it in the opposite order (or merely engage in the latter).
Then, you are not giving them a starting point for investigating ethics: you are giving them a Nietschien, moral anti-realist, position to explore.
Sure: I dont see your point. They were asking where to begin to understand what is good: being an atheist doesnt preclude moral realism.
No worries, and fair enough. You are right that the concept of evil does arise out of religious ideologies, being closely connected to sin, but I dont think we have to use it that way.
I agree that most people would agree that suffering is bad, but this doesnt provide the necessary connection to show that it is actually bad. E.g., if everyone thinks that red blocks are bad and blue blocks are good, then does that thereby make it so? Of course not: thats just inter-subjective agreement.
What you would have to do, if you are a moral realist, in order to do proper ethics, is demonstrate how suffering is bad by way of explicating what badness is, how to assess something as bad or good, and apply that to suffering.
For example, I would say that Moore was right that the concept of good and bad are absolutely primitive and simplelike being, value, time, space, etc.as opposed to derivative and complex conceptslike a car, a cat, a bat, etc.and thusly are knowable through only pure intuition. I would say that the concept of goodwhich can only be described inaccurately through synonyms, analogies, metaphors, etc.refers to that which should be; that which should be sought after; that which is best (or better); etc.
As a neo-aristotelian, I would say that objective goods, which are just goods in their proper sense (as opposed to moral anti-realist concepts of it), and bads arise out of the teleology of things as relativistic to how the thing was supposed to be (as demonstrated by its Telos). E.g., a good farmer, a good human, a good clock, a good bubonic plague, a good lion, etc. These are not hypothetical goods nor are they non-objectivee.g., a good farmer is not hypothetically good at farming nor are they good at farming only because one wants them to be nor are they good at farming only because one thinks they are: they are, in fact, good at farming.
Suffering is generally bad, then, because it represents a (living) being not living up to their Telos properly (either voluntarily or by force) as suffering is normally the bodies way of telling itself what it is designed to do is not happening (and, on the contrary, what anti-thetical to it is happening). However, I would note that suffering simpliciter is not bad, because suffering is required in order to properly fulfill ones duties, roles, and (utlimately) Telos.
I am not advocating that you need to agree with me on my analysis of what is good here; but I merely advocate that you do the same with respect to your theory. Otherwise, you are prone to many mistakes by venturing in muddied waters.
If you read my post again, it would be clear what the concept of moral good is from Aristotle. Good is a quality or property of actions which brings happiness to all parties involved.
If you are interested in the wider concepts of good, there are plenty available on internet searches. But is the OP asking for the concept of Good in general? It doesn't appear to be. The OP asks where to begin Quoting Matias Isoo.
Discussing all the concepts of Good by different philosophers and systems in history would be too general, and not very relevant to the OP's question. Perhaps it could be a separate thread of its own?
It's my own view, home grown in my own little brain, but yes, it's echoed by Nietzsche, and it's in keeping with the essential teachings of Jesus. So it has that going for it.
Quoting Bob Ross
I think it does. You're just attached to this little rock going nowhere for a short amount of time. Love and do what you will.
He cant. He just doesnt know it, never stopped to think about it.
You misunderstand me: the concept of good refers to whatever 'good' means, not what or how one can predicate something to have it. Viz., the concept of value does not refer to what may be valuable. One must first understand, explicitly, what 'value' even means, not just as a word but as a concept, to determine what has it.
That bringing happiness is good is a predication of goodness; and not a definition of what is good. You are putting the cart before the horse: the OP person needs to start at the basics.
Nietzsches thoughts on morality are completely incompatible with Christianity. Moral anti-realism is incompatible with Jesus teachings. Beyond good and evil is about creating ones own values, which are non-objective, and imposing them on themselves and other people: how is that compatible with Christs objective morality which is (allegedly) grounded in divine law?
Thats just a red herring. What does that have to do with anything? What is good is good: who cares if you are just on a little rock? What about your view would help give some objective form of goodness?
I would also mention that it is exceedingly difficult to actually justify moral realism with Christianity (although I understand that is a very hot take) .the euthyphro dilemma still holds to me. Also, even if Gods nature does facilitate some sort of (objective) goods, then it seems that it would only relativistically apply to God (teleologically) (no different then how the human good refers to humansnot God).
This is tautological. This is unhelpful. This is not an answer to any of the questions. What's good is *insert definition* is the correct form of this statement. Everyone has their own. And that's absolutely fine.
You just randomly misquoted me to try and pick a low hanging fruit (without reading anything I said). Either engage in what I am saying and give a useful (or at least genuinely attempted) response, or don't wedge yourself into other people's conversations.
I would recommend not immediately getting defensive and difficult because someone has put you to something.
We can talk about what we mean by "good" without worrying about moral realism. Our heritage includes several different ideas about morality. Jewish, Persian, Roman, Greek. They're all in Christianity. I've had my fill of reading about all of that, though. That's not where I start in thinking about morality. I start with the content of my own heart.
What might your primary consideration be, for separating what good is, from what is good?
This is why I tend to think of helping others being a potential example of good. Good often comes at a price. Good may have a personal cost. Good may be difficult and painful. Hence the association of self-sacrifice with good. If good is simply what pleases you, you might be a con-artist and thief.
You seem to be unaware of the fact that there are hundreds of different concepts of moral good depending on which theory you are looking at. Whatever definition you choose as your definition, it wouldn't be the only one, and definitely not the final one either.
I have given out the inferred definition from Aristotle's idea. It is clearly saying what moral good is, even if it sounds indirect and informal.
It wouldn't be right to force down a randomly selected concept of moral good to someone who is looking for a basic method to build the moral code.
The problem I was raising is that the OP is asking:
And your response to them was to suggest starting with analyzing happiness; when that is clearly not a good starting point for metaethics.
Because the what goodness is is presupposed in what can be said to be good, so how can one accurately predicate goodness to something when they have not a clue what goodness is itself? That's blind metaethics, my friend....
OK, fine. What is goodness according to you?
:chin:
What meaningfully is there to talk about other than whether goodness is objective; whether judgments about what are good are cognitive and some of them are true; and so forth? Sure, we can venture into metaethics without explicitly dealing with realism vs. anti-realism, but there core tenants of each are going to be addressed irregardless...
Dude. That's your answer?
The reason I am being so harsh with you, is because you obviously cherry-picked one sentence from my most recent post to someone else......
When I said that, I said:
Of which the phrase "what is good is good" clearly refers to the idea it is objective, and not that I am defining 'good' circularly.
It isn't productive to cherry-pick peoples' responses and address something utterly irrelevant to the conversation.
Yes...... :brow:
PS: I refer you back to this comment, because you never actually addressed it.
That doesn't matter for my point I was making: I was pointing out that the OP is asking where to start, and surely they must start with the concept of 'good' and not what can be said to be good. This is a basic distinction that shockingly no one else in this thread seems to cares about: everyone is just nudging @Matias Isoo in the direction of their metaethical and normative ethical commitments. I am not here to do that, because that's not what the OP is asking about. You don't start with someone else's robust ethical theory when starting ethics: you build your own way up.
I think we each learn about goodness viscerally through experiences with grief, fear, and anger. But prove me wrong. What's your favored definition of goodness?
Where did Moore say that? From my memory, Moore said it is impossible to define what good is, and one must start from what one ought to do from the knowledge of what morally good actions are, rather than asking what good is. (Ethics since 1900, by M. Warnock)
If it is from the actual reference from the original texts and academic commentaries on these points, you should indicate the source of the reference with your claims.
I don't think I said to analyze happiness. I said what brings happiness to all parties involved is good. So it was an inferred definition of Good.
If you ever read any Ethics book, most of them start from the story of Socrates who asked, "How should we live?". He doesn't talk about what good is. No one really starts with what good is. Because like Moore said, and I agreed, good is not an entity. It is a property and quality. It is not possible to define what good is, according to Moore.
I have responded to this as presented in several of your posts in this thread. Not the bare quote which I used to represent it. That bare quote would, one would think, cast you back to your entire position. It seems more likely you have someone disingenuous assumed that's all there was to respond to, in my mind which is not the case.
If your harshness is borne out of what's there in the full post i've quoted above, that is a misunderstanding on your part. I have adequately responded to your position. Your notion of 'objective good' is circular. I have made that much clear about my position, whether you agree with it or not. Unless you're actually obfuscating, in which case, maybe take a bit of time before replying (but i assume this is not hte case)
I should say, the two elements don't seem mutually exclusive - which is why i've been saying unhelpful rather htan unreasonable. It could be objective and circular, as Euthyphro shows is almost certainly the case, if an objective good were to obtain.
I didnt ask about goodness, and Im not interested in meta-ethics.
It seems to me youre advocating somewhat of what you claim Moore is refuting. At least, with respect to what I asked about, you havent shown that by which you understand what good is, yet youve presupposed goodness as a qualitative judgement of it.
There is no legitimate warrant for determining how good a thing is, re: its goodness, without an a priori sense of good itself. Just as you cant say of a thing its beauty without that to which its beauty relates.
Which immediately requires you to separate the empirical contingency of the one from the a priori necessity of the other.
Clocks ticking, Bob.
(Grin)
b-b-b-bingo.
Tictoktictok???
As my ol buddy Billy Gibbons might say to Bob .got (you) under presssssuuurre .
I don't disagree with that: I think we learn about all concepts through experience; but that doesn't mean that we can skip steps and put the horse before the cart.
My answer of what the concept of good is, is found in this post:
Quoting Bob Ross
My understanding of the Principia Ethica, when I read it a while ago, was that his whole critique was, first and foremost, that ethics hitherto had not even thought to question what the concept of good even is and, instead, skipped over it to a discussion of what can be predicated to have it. This is not to say that Moore, upon conducting (what he considered to be) the necessary investigation into the nature of goodness (as opposed to what The Good iswhat can be said to be chiefly good), concluded that we can define it accurately. In fact, you are absolutely right that he considered it an absolutely simple and primitive concept; and I am inclined to agree with him on that point.
Ethics since 1900 was not written by Moore. If you want to understand Moore, then you need to read The Principia Ethica:
-- (Principia Ethica, Ch. 1, Section 5)
Even if I grant your point, my point still stands:
Quoting Bob Ross
The OP is asking where to start to understand what is good, and I am merely pointing out that you are trying to have them start with Aristotelian ethics (at best); and starting with an already existing, robust theory is not the proper way to start. One needs to start by studying what the nature of goodness is: that is the beginning of metaethics.
Thats all fine: the OP is about where should a person start. Do you think they should just skip over asking themselves is good definable?? Do you just want them to skip that step?!?
No, one would not think that AmadeusD; because for anyone who actually read my posts, I took a Moorean position on the nature of goodness which is not circular. Again, you just quoted me out of context when I was talking about how goodness is objective.
All you said was this:
Quoting AmadeusD
All you did is address that, when taken literally, what is good is good is tautological and doesnt give a real definition. You absolutely did not address anything about my idea that goodness is objective. Now you are just trying to ad hoc rationalize your laziness.
AmadeusD, I try to be charitable; but on this one I cant...its too painfully obvious what you did. You read a tiny snippet, which had nothing substantial to do with the post in which it was, that said what is good is good and assumed I was trying to define goodness as goodness.
The Euthyphro Dilemma is about God and Gods relation to any objective goodness to demonstrate that God cant really be the standard for it; and does not provide any reason to believe that an objective morality cannot exist.
Perhaps I misread, then: I thought you asked about what is goodno? Goodness is just the property of being good.
I am just advocating that a person who wants to begin understanding what is good must start with analyzing what they think the concept of good is; then what can be said to be good. Thats it. I dont think the person in the OP should start with our understanding of what we think goodness refers to.
Well, this just opened up a can of worms (;
Now we inevitably begin discussing transcendental idealism again haha. The question you raise, is an interesting, Kantian oneviz., if we cannot know how the things-in-themselves are, then how can we know what is in-itself good?
In short, I think this falls prey the same issue that transcendental idealism has with its in-itself vs. for-us distinction: by in-itself, I take Kant to really be meaning (whether he likes it or not) how a thing exists independently of any experience of it; and theres another common meaning for in-itself, which is just the nature of a thing (and this can be based off of conditional knowledge of it). I find no reason to believe that I cannot have indirect knowledge of reality as it were in-itself in the second sense of that term.
So, for me, I would say that we have a sense of what it beautiful just as much as what is good (and just as much as what is a car) by our conditional knowledge of the world around us. All we need in order to grasp what is good (conditionally), is the intellect. That is, I guess, the a priori sense of good itselfalthough I am certainly not referring to exactly what you meant here (since you probably meant a faculty of some sort that is special for grasping morality). Or are you thinking that by concept of good, I am referring to an a priori concept of good?
EDIT:
It is also worth mentioning that moral non-naturalists will nod their approval your way on this one; and say that we do have some sort of extra sense for morality that allows us to sense the supersensible or that God gives us divine revelation.
It is good that you admit your misunderstanding Moore, and your claim was wrong. :cool:
Quoting Bob Ross
Warnock was a professor of Philosophy, and the book is a good introduction to modern Ethics. I don't think you need to read The PE, in order to understand Moore, unless you are specializing in his Ethics.
Quoting Bob Ross
I am easy with that. If you think the concept of Good is intensely relevant to the topic, by all means carry on with unfolding and elaborating on it. Your question on whether to skip the step should be asked to the OP, not me.
:lol:
:roll: I find it interesting that the person who has never read Moore, who doesn't see a need to, thinks they are understand Moore better than someone who actually has.
This conversation is a waste of my time.
It seems to be the case, that your reading the original text was not very through or accurate. The academic commentaries are for helping you to understand the original texts better, and they could correct the misunderstandings you make from your readings on the original texts. They are not being written so that they can be ignored or treated as not useful. Therefore I would advise you not to ignore the academic commentaries and introductions to the topics and original texts.
Quoting Bob Ross
I thought it was not a waste of time at all, because it helped someone to correct his misunderstanding on Moore. :D
How do you know? You've never read it lmao.
Nothing was corrected about what I said: I refer you back to my response. I have maintained the same position throughout this discussion, and you are merely confused about Moore and my claims (as they relate thereto) because you haven't read him.
EDIT: I also refer you to your original post that I was responding to <here>.
I reject that good has properties, like most balls have a round property and gasoline has a fluid property. Good is an ideal of pure practical reason, that principle which serves as the ground of determinations of will which satisfy the worthiness of being happy.
I agree with Moore, insofar as to define an ideal principle does little justice to it, while at the same time, all moral judgements are a priori in necessary reference to it.
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Quoting Bob Ross
Dont have to, there are plenty of other kinds. But if that happens, then Kant yes; idealism, yes; transcendental philosophy ..no. Moral philosophy is not transcendental in a Kantian sense.
Quoting Bob Ross
Because the subject in his moral philosophy uses a different aspect of his understanding, judgement and reason for his moral determinations, than are used for his knowledge claims. An in-itself from the strictly moral perspective or domain, is such insofar as it is a construct completely internal to the subject himself, and its relative goodness is known with apodeitic certainty because it is measured against how good the subject feels about it, rather than whether or not he contradicts himself.
The understanding is prudential rather than cognitive; the judgement is aesthetic rather than discursive, and pure reason is practical rather than transcendental.
From the human point of view, a pure dualist intelligence is necessary to appreciate that ..
..Real things, re: reality writ large, belong to Nature, insofar as Nature is their causality, and are given to us for the use of pure theoretical reason in determining how they are to be known;
..Moral things, re: morality writ large, belong to us, insofar as we are their causality from the use of pure practical reason in determining what they will be, and are given to Nature.
Given this obvious and universal dualism, the dual aspect of pure reason itself is justified.
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Quoting Bob Ross
Maybe not so much as what is a car, but we certainly do have a sense of what it is to be beautiful. Thats the question: what is it that just is this sense and from whence does it arise. As well, with this, for you, it is impossible to explain those fundamental conditions by which we can all have the same sense of what a car is, but we do not all have the same sense of what good is.
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Quoting Bob Ross
There ya go. Others may differ, of course.
Quoting Bob Ross
Well you have agreed with my point succinctly in your post, but then for some mysterious reasons you seem to have changed your mind again.
Now I agree, that this discussion is a waste of time.
Harris gets some crucial things right. However, he knows he has serious problems. In particular he:
-Wants to define science broadly such that it is continuous with philosophy. This certainly justifiable, but then he has no theory for how the sciences hang together and form a unity. This is a problem, particularly because different sciences have different measures that are roughly analogous to "goodness." For instance, medicine has health and economics has utility, but people often derive utility from things that are bad for their health, and it is not always obvious which metric is to be preferred.
-He equivocates on what he means by "science" so as to exclude philosophy he doesn't like from consideration (also a general tendency to rely on incredulity rather than actually making arguments).
-Has no real answer to collective action problems, prisoners' dilemmas, or free rider problems, which are all over ethics, because he has any such unifying vision of well-being, goodness, and the sciences. Hence, he has trouble explaining why it is good to be virtuous.
-His exclusion of freedom on incredibly flimsy grounds (i.e. freedom must mean "uncaused action" and something like substance dualism), robs him of the ability to explain why virtue is good and some "forms of well-being" deeper, because they lead to self-determination. Self-determination is, however, a prerequisite for actually turning moral philosophy into real action.
I think his project could really benefit from reading Aristotle and even more so St. Thomas, but given his prejudices, that seems unlikely.
I'm actually writing a paper on this because, from my experience in government, it seems that something like Harris view is dominant amongst policymakers and economists (less the religious bigotry, which most don't share). Yet there is a lot in Harris that is said better in earlier thought.
Harris makes a lot of excellent points:
Yet he sometimes makes them very poorly, and St. Thomas is the prime candidate I can think of who makes this same point far more lucidly and in the context of an incredibly tight system.
You're beginning to come across genuinely incapable of having this type exchange - the amount of genuinely unreasonable statements you're making is quite distracting from anything of substance you might be sandwiching in there. This response makes absolutely zero sense in the face of what I have said. That makes it close to impossible to respond adequately.
Quoting Bob Ross
This is a prime example. IF you were being charitable, it would be painfully obvious (and, i've checked this by running the set of exchanges by a third party who has no skin in the exchange) that what I have said there is exactly what it says - an example that ab objective Good would need to be circular. As every single thing you have posited shows, clearly. Your assertion to the opposite is simply false.
Suffice to say all my responses stand on their own two feet. You can respond how you want :)
I already outlined in this post; and of which you didnt respond at all.
The euthyphro dilemma refers to whether or not God is determines what is good or if what God determines is good because it is good: this has nothing to do with my position, nor anything I have said.
You seem to think that the euthyphro dilemma refers to objective goodness being circular (or needing to be circularly defined): it doesnt.
I will say it one last time: my definition is not circular, and I agree with Moore that it cannot be defined properly.
The problem with our conversation is that you birthed it out of half-assedly wedging yourself into my conversation with someone else. Again, your first quote in this exchange was an abysmal attempt at engaging in conversation.
I have maintained from the beginning of this discussion thread that I think Moore was right that good is an absolutely primitive and simple concept. E.g., (although this wasn't addressed to you) this post. I am not saying you need to be aware of all my posts to other people in the thread, but I never suggested to the contrary in my discussion with you. My point was:
Where the conversation turned into a quest into Moorean ethics, was:
I never suggested that the concept of good was definable in the sense that can be adequately defined.
So, going back to the actual point I was making, do you think the OP should start analyzing what is good by looking at what makes them happy (like you originally suggested) or what they think goodness even is in the first place? Do you still want them to put the cart before the horse?
EDIT:
I think what happened is you took my (consistent) approval of Moorean thought on the concept of 'good' as an admission that one shouldn't start out by analyzing what they think goodness is. I don't think that the person in the OP should start out with my idea of goodness, which is very Moorean, but, instead, should begin with their own understanding of it. A person just getting into ethics shouldn't start with other peoples' ethical theories: they should start by building their way up. What you, and most people on this thread did, is nudge the OP in the direction of your own ethical theory; instead of nudging in the direction of how to think about ethics for themselves.
I was referring to the property of goodness, and not properties of goodness. It is one property, just like redness is the one property of being red.
This seems to contradict your previous point though: if practical reason is attributing to things good or bad, then it is assigning things the property of goodness and badness. No?
Am I understanding correctly, that you, then, view what is good as whatever makes one happy? Again, wouldnt that entail that, contrary to your first point, happiness is good (which entails it has the property of goodness)?
Then, what do you mean by moral judgments being a priori?
This sounds like you are saying that moral judgments do not express something objective, correct?
I reject this as a false dichotomy. How reality is can dictate how it ought to be (for me).
I would say biology.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I've worked with a lot with policy makers in this country. Pretty much no one believes in god and their atheism is so ubiquitous in this largely secular country, that most don't even know what religion or theism refers to, except as the colourful beliefs held by immigrants. :wink:
If you believe goodness is innate knowledge, then why did you campaign to have people explain what it is?
I wasn't: I was advocating that everyone is giving the OP an incorrect starting position, which was whatever the responder thought is chiefly good (or good). It is first vital to segregate what the property is from what can be assigned it, what can be said to be good from what goodness even is itself, and that this is the first proper step of getting into (meta)ethics.
This is a classical mistake, and the most common of which (in this thread) was nudging the OP in the direction of happiness.
Likewise, just because one cannot define something, it does not follow that one cannot describe that something to the point of understanding it sufficiently. Just because the concept of good is purely intuition, it does not follow that everyone automatically has a good grasp of what it is.
I didn't do that.
CC: @Mww, @Corvus
Quoting frank
I don't have a problem with the fact that you have your own ethical theory (in fact, I would be interested to hear about it), but the problem is that you just nudged them immediately towards your own view instead of explaining to them how to build up their own like this.
That was my only original point with everyone.
To be fair, I sympathize with starting a novice with analyzing existing ethical theories to begin; but that is putting the cart before the horse. It is a real problem that many people have, as exemplified by the fact that everyone so far (that I have noticed) in this thread has immediately bypassed metaethics to suggest their own whole-sale theories. The order of analysis in ethics is metaethics, normative ethics, then applied ethics.
No one, as far as I noticed, stopped to question what goodness is, what it would mean for it to be objective, what it would mean for judgments about it to be cognitive, etc.; No one thought to nudge the OP in the direction of asking what the nature of moral properties are; No one thought to ask them whether or not goodness would be a natural property; etc.
How is it not putting the cart before the horse to talk about this being good, or thinking about if this would be good and how it would be, before the metaphysics of goodness?
Because morality is a road you walk. You fall, you get up, you learn, you try again. You learn what it feels like to be forgiven, how it's like being 10 feet tall. You come to see how bitterness twists your soul, but you don't know how to stop. And so on, and on.
The metaphysics of morality doesn't enhance the journey too much, does it?
I found my old copy PE, and had a quick scan of the book. Moore says something like this,
"Who right minded folk would ask what Good is unless for lexicographical purpose? .... Good is good. It is undefinable." (PE, pp.6)
You seem to think Moore had started with a concept of Good in PE, which is a misunderstanding of the original text in PE.
Quoting Bob Ross
Your writing above seems to suggest Good is definable from what Moore had said about Good. Good is an absolutely primitive and simple concept. When Moore said Good is an absolutely primitive and simple concept, he didn't mean that it is a definition of Good. He was just telling about the nature of Good.
How can you define good when it is not definable? It seems to suggest you don't understand what you have been maintaining, and are self negating yourself.
I think it does. Normative ethics without metaethics is blind.
No. Moore starts with an analysis of the concept of good: that was my point. You started with an analysis of what can be predicated to be good. That happiness is good does not say anything about what goodness is. That is an issue that you have: saying that goodness is undefinable (because it is absolutely simple) does not exempt you from this problemyou have to still analyze the properties of goodness (which includes analyzing, first and foremost, what the concept of good refers to).
What Moore means by undefinable is not that we cant analyze its properties; afterall, he was a non-naturalist. What he meant is that what exactly good simpliciter means cannot be defined properly because it is an absolutely simple concept. We are not in disagreement here; and I am not sure what about what I am saying is leading you to believe that I think we can define the concept of good in this sense of definability. In a looser sense of definability, we can: we can analyze the property of goodness and other moral properties themselves, beyond trying to properly define the concept of good simpliciter, such as moral realism vs. anti-realism, cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism, naturalism vs. non-naturalism, etc.
Show me where I ever said that we can define good in this sense. Never once. I even referred you to an earlier post I made where I explicitly stated that the concept of good is absolutely simple and cannot be properly defined.
I don't know, Huckleberry Finn never studied meta-ethics.
OK, it is not an important point anyway. Just was trying to clarify the murky points you raised in this thread. It is not the main focus of this OP either.
I feel that my explanation for Good as the actions which brings happiness to all involved parties meeting at the mid point was good enough definition, if you really insist that one must start from a concept of Good.
If you feel that is the way you want go, and wish to present your concept of Good, by all means, go ahead after consulting the OP on the matter. I will stand aside, and add my opinion, if any crops up.
Redness isnt so much a property as the relative quality of being red. It may be that a thing has a certain redness, indicating some relative quality of a certain property. But this latter use requires an object to which the property belongs, whereas the concept, in and of itself, does not. We perceive that a thing is red; we appreciate how or what kind of red it is, its redness.
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Quoting Bob Ross
Attribution requires a conscious subject, the conscious subject requires functional intelligence, functional intelligence requires reason. You might say attribution requires reason, but you cant say reason attributes.
Ideal of is not attribution to; your misunderstanding is not my contradiction. I may have, and you may show that, Ive contradicted myself; just not with that.
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Quoting Bob Ross
Moral judgements being a priori doesnt make them transcendental. Reason isnt necessarily transcendental, is only so in the consideration of those ideas the objects of which arising as schema of understanding, contain no possibility of experience.
Moral philosophy, then, while it may contain transcendental ideas, re: freedom, the c.i., and so on, isnt itself a transcendental doctrine, for its end just is experience, in the form of acts conforming to it.
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Quoting Bob Ross
Wouldnt given to Nature indicate something objective?
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Quoting Bob Ross
Yes, thats the common position of the pure realist, insofar as hes already determined reality without understanding it. And theres your proverbial cart before the horse. In truth, reality merely presents itself, dictating nothing of its own or of itself.
Common, in that the comfort of certain knowledge as an end diminishes the theoretical means by which it obtains.
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Quoting Bob Ross
Wonderful. In a place where the main contributing dialectical factor .is metaphysical?
What an odd lot we are: we know how biology gives us brains but we dont know how brains give us reason; we know how reason gives us metaphysics but we dont know how metaphysics gives us brains.
I dare you to call THAT a false dichotomy!!!
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Quoting Bob Ross
I do that on purpose, for the simple reason the moral philosophy I favor has it as a condition. It may not necessarily be true humanity in general gravitates towards instances of personal happiness, but it is certainly persuasive that it does. And even if that general gravitation isnt happiness, it is something, otherwise there is no fundamental underlying condition which serves as a rule for describing humanity proper. Nothing is lost by initiating a rational moral philosophy, which may even attempt to define good as the OP inquires, with happiness as a fundamental condition.
I am assuming you mean Mark Twain didn't study metaethics, normative ethics, nor applied ethics: in fact, I don't believe they existed as defined areas of ethics back then (given that it came along with Analytic Philosophy). More importantly, I am noting what is necessary to provide a treaties, an analytic proper, in ethics and not what is best for works of (american) literature. What is most convincing to people (politically), is certainly not a robust and rigid analysis of ethics.
What murky points?
It is, because the OP is asking where to begin in understanding what is good. It is putting the cart before the horse to begin with what can be predicated to be good, when one hasnt analyzed what goodness is itself. Do you disagree?
This was my main point that you keep dismissing without any response: happiness is good is not a description whatsoever of what goodness is. It is not an analysis of the metaphysics of goodness. When you say it was [a] good enough definition, that is patently false; because it was not a definition in any of the two senses of the term that I used before (or anyone uses).
This is analogous to if there was an OP asking where to begin studying what is red, and your response is to say analyze red trucks. One should not begin with an analysis of what can be predicated to be red (like a red truck)viz., happinessbut rather what does it mean for something, in principle, to be red at all? Thats where begin.
Thanks for taking care of that. You're doing a great job. :up:
You are still missing the point. I never said happiness is Good. I said, actions which brings happiness is Good.
I thought my point in my previous posts were clear. Good is not an entity. It is property or quality. There is no such a thing called Good. So Moore was right, it is undefinable.
Only human actions are good or not good based on the fact that whether the actions brought happiness to the society, the parties involved and the agent.
Until actions are performed, and analysied based on the above criteria, there is no such thing as Good. Good is the quality of some human actions.
Yes I disagree. The horse want to have a free run by himself in the field, but you keep insisting putting the cart onto him.
Good cannot be found until you have performed some actions first.
Not all actions are moral actions of course. If you went out for a walk or dropped off by the shop, that is not moral action category. But if you helped out an elderly crossing the busy road for her safety, then it is an action performed in moral category.
From the practical reasoning, you would have known the action was morally good. It brought happiness to all the parties involved in the action, and it would be judged as morally good when the action was performed out of pure duty to bring happiness to the society, the elderly and yourself. This is how moral good operates and means. There is no some matter called Good out there for you to define what it is.
In contrast to 'instrumental good' or 'aesthetic good', I define ethical good as flourishing (eudaimonia) from the moral conduct (eusocial habits) of non-reciprocally reducing harms (re: suffering).
Read (e.g.) Epicurus & Philippa Foot ...
So, under your view, it is good to do things that make you happy; but not good to be happy?
My critique did not presuppose that there is an abstract object of The Good. Predicating happiness as being good is analogous to predicating actions (that produce happiness) as being good. You can just swap the parts where I said happiness is good for actions which bring about happiness are good in my critique, and it all still stands.
That is a non-sequiture. Moore is talking about the property of goodness, just like you. Moore is not saying that goodness is undefinable because there is no abstract object for it.
That implies happiness is a good thing; which you denied above.
Good is the concept of, roughly speaking, what ought to be: what you just described is the concept of moral good.
You dont think that it may be, under certain circumstances, immoral to go out for a walk?
If it is good to do things that make you happy, then you are good to be happy. There are many different ways good can be used.
Quoting Bob Ross
You seem to be trying to make things more complicated than necessary here.
Quoting Bob Ross
I was pointing out what looks like the source of your misunderstanding.
Quoting Bob Ross
Where did you get the idea? :D Who on earth would deny happiness is good? Happiness is the purpose of life, according to Aristotle.
Quoting Bob Ross
I was looking into various philosophers' concept of Good, but there weren't much in them. One thing noticeable was that the concept of Good was all different in the different philosophers. Beginning with the concept of Good seems to be a not good idea in studying Ethics. Maybe you could come up with establishing the concept in the middle or later stage of reading up Ethics, if it is your topic of interest.
Quoting Bob Ross
Depending on the situation, it could be. It was just a simple example to help you understand the principle.
You did: are you trying to troll me? Thats literally what I responded to, when you said:
I am growing impatient with how lazy and ridiculous you are being. You say one thing, and then deny it in the very next post.
This explains exactly why your position is so muddied and convoluted. Instead of providing a substantive response, you just noted that you have absolutely no clue what I am saying.
This is just a blanket assertion: I already explained that this is exactly what one should do, because analyzing what can be said to be good cannot be done properly without knowing what one means by good in the first place. Thats like determining what is red without knowing what red is itself. To negate this, you would have to explain how one can, e.g., reliably know what objects are red without knowing what being red refers to.
I was explaining to your question. When you say good actions make you happy, then the good actions were the cause for your happiness. You can be happy without any cause at all from your emotional state of the day. Hence good can be many different things depending on how you use it in the different situation.
You seem to be too over sensitive on reading the philosophical explanations, which are meant to offer you the simple explanations to your questions. It could be the case that you might be injecting too much emotions into the interactions on what supposed to be objective and rational discussions.
You seem to have some fixed ideas of your own on all these questions. But you asked the questions just for the question begging purposes, it appears. It seems to be the case that your questions were not to clarify the points, but to negate the replies as soon as they were sent to you. They are the typical case of question begging.
I apologize Mww, I forgot to respond to this one.
But thats what redness means: its the property of being red. Sure, a property is attributed to things by subjects; and so it is an estimation, to your point, of the quality which the thing has (or has for us in the case of the phenomenal property of redness). However, what use is it to this conversation to note that? I am not following the relevance. When analyzing redness, we would analyze redness (:
I would would say thinking attributes.
Can you elaborate more on this part? I didnt quite follow it. When would a judgment be a prior but not transcendental?
No, because that which the subject bestows onto Nature is not from nature itself; and bestowing properties to things which are not estimations of whatever qualities those things have themselves is purely subjective. Hence why moral anti-realism is considered the doctrine of projection; and moral realism the doctrine of discovery.
The point, I think, a moral realist would be mentioning is that there are features or qualities of Nature herself, or perhaps reality itself (for non-naturalists), which are of moral relevance and are the truth-bearers for moral propositions. So far, it sounds like in your view reality has no moral properties or qualities itself: we are just projecting what we want or think to be the case, with no objective basis, onto it.
What do you mean?
Well, I think science tends to engage, secretly but necessarily, in metaphysics. Biology includes some metaphysics, dont you think? It is the study of the nature of the body afterall .
Fair enough; but thats my point. Shouldnt we be nudging the OP in the direction of how to build their own theoryto think for themselves ethicallyinstead of nudging them in the direction of our own positions when the question asked is how do I determine what is good?? I would rather see us giving them the tools to ethicize then tell them our own ethical theories.
I dont disagree that eudaimonic happiness is the chief good for any living being; and it is necessarily so because it is merely the biproduct of the beings physical constitution working in harmony and unison to do what it was designed to. Thats what it means to live well.
Your comments speak for themselves:
Quoting Corvus
Quoting Corvus
It was a bit disappointing to see your reaction rejecting my replies outright without much substance on your counter argument, and your uncorroborated accusation on my posts as a troll.
Quoting Bob Ross
From my observations in the past,
1. The accuser of troll is the genuine troll.
2. The accuser has nothing substantial to contribute to the topic. (ran out of ideas or knowledge)
3. The accuser's main purpose for his postings were question begging, rather than genuine interest in the topic.
4. The accuser is in some deep misunderstanding on the world and others.
I am going to break it down explicitly clear for you, and if you cannot muster the strength to respond adequately then we are going to have to agree to disagree.
I gave an elaborate and painfully obvious critique of your position:
Quoting Bob Ross
Your response was to say:
Quoting Corvus
Thereby trying to evade my critique by providing the rejoinder that it was a mischaracterization of your view (because you do not believe happiness is good). I, then, responded with:
Quoting Bob Ross
And:
Quoting Bob Ross
You, then, responded with:
Quoting Corvus
And:
Quoting Corvus
You are impossible to converse with, because you concede nothing (but instead try to ad hoc refactor your position as if it was your original point) and act like the recipient is the one completely misunderstanding the conversation. You tried to circumvent my critique by first challenging the idea that happiness is good and then when that didnt work completely contradicted yourself and acted like I just completely fabricated the idea that you thought happiness was not good; and your response became ~your over complicating this.
Theres no discussion to be had if you are going to continue to stand ten toes down in this kind of way. Either address the critique or dont; and stop acting like you didnt originally counter my critique with the denial that happiness is good. Its on the tapes, as I showed above: anyone can see for themselves.
EDIT:
I don't care if you think happiness is good or not per se: I am just pointing out that you refuse to accept the obvious contradiction that you landing yourself in. It would be very easy for you to just concede this and reword or refactor what you were saying to make it coherent: I am guilty of it too, and many people on this forum know that I refactor my positions all the time. I am not interested in holding you to previous things you have said as if you must stand by them forever: I just can't stand it when people try to act like what obviously just happened didn't happen. E.g., "where did you get that idea?": I don't know, maybe when you literally said it?
Happiness is a state of mind, which is the purpose of life. This idea is from Aristotle, which inspired me to follow.
My point is simple, and precise. There is not much complication there.
Morally good actions bring happiness to all parties involved.
Happiness is a state of mind, which is the purpose of life.
You could further analyse what happiness is. We could say happiness is a mental state of mind, which is good and satisfactory. Good here is different from moral good of course. A good mental state is the opposite of a bad or unpleasant mental state, which is totally different from moral good.
I couldn't believe when you asked, can happiness be not good. I don't think I have implied or suggested that happiness is not good. Happiness is always good.
Good here is the quality of the mental state, which is happiness.
Moral good is the quality or value of some human actions when performed out of the moral duties and practical reasoning.
This sounds incredibly obtuse and irrelevant. My point was defining good wouldn't make one morally good, or more morally sensitive person. Rather, being able to reason what morally good actions are in the real life situations, which brings happiness to all parties would be more practical way to be morally apt person.
You are talking about something totally different in some other planet, from what I am talking about.
So a property of a property? Red is a property of a thing and redness is a property of red? Usually, a property facilitates establishment of consistent identity of an appearance, so that it can be said of any thing perceived as having that property, it is a particular thing. Must we then concede red is only so, inasmuch as it has this property of redness, all the while the thing we actually perceive as being red, retains its identity without regard to its redness?
That may be fine, but the problem lies in the negation, in that we can still say of a red thing it is that thing even if it has relative redness, but we cannot say of a thing it is that thing if it isnt red.
Quoting Bob Ross
Property attributed by subjects to things, yes. The quality a thing has because of it, no. Property relates to the identity the thing has, whereas quality is an estimation of the property itself. This reflects the error of calling redness a property of red, when it is actually the quality of it, leaving red itself alone, to be the property of the thing.
Quoting Bob Ross
The relevance follows from, originally, the concept under discussion was good, but has since been replaced by red, which doesnt matter much, in that adding -ness to either one has the same implication. The real point resides in this: when analyzing redness we are analyzing red, not redness.
By extension, then, when analyzing goodness we are analyzing good, not goodness. And the comment addressing biology as the inappropriate science for analyzing good, resides in the -ness qualifier, which implies relative degrees, and herein lies the authority of metaphysics proper, insofar as for any relative degree there must be an extreme, which is EXACTLY what were looking for, in the negative sense ..good in and of itself, not good for this or that, but just plain ol good. Period. Full stop. Bare-bones, pure conception representing a fundamental condition upon which a proper moral philosophy follows.
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Quoting Bob Ross
Were already in possession of the tools for ethicizing. They are codes of conduct, administrative rules, edicts and assorted jurisprudence generally, in the pursuit of what is right. None of which has anything to do with what is good.
Quoting Bob Ross
Which is the whole point ..that is the wrong question to ask. It is good to ethicize in accordance with assorted jurisprudence, which reflects ones treatment of his fellow man, which one can accomplish for no other reason than thats what everyone else is doing.
When asked what good is, as indicated above, good in and of itself, not good for this or that end, not good in reflection of treatment of fellow men, we may come closer to what makes us tick as subjects rather than what makes us tick as herds. Which reduces to .a reflection on how man treats himself in accordance to his own personal code, for which he and he alone is the law-giver.
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Quoting Bob Ross
Hmmm .for any living being? What happened to tools for ethicizing? Are ants being ethical for not crowding each other out of the way when entering the hole to the lair? Ive seen one guy punch other guy in the face for trying to get through the same door at the same time.
Only certain forms of living beings are conditioned by happiness on the one hand, and it isnt the chief good on the other. The chief good is worthiness for being happy, which reduces to a principle.. .that by which his worthiness of being happy, directly relates to the good of his will.
So in this roundabout way, arises the premise: there is no other good, as such, in and of itself .hence undefinable .as a good will. That which doesn't do for the good of something else, but does because it is good to do. And that by which living well does not necessarily comport with being happy.
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Quoting Bob Ross
No need; I get that a lot.
Is that the proper order? Seems to me we know concrete events better than general principles. They are what are "best known to us." Most people have no trouble identifying all sorts of abhorrent acts as wrong, be they individual acts like running down a toddler for picking one of your crops, or policies like like health insurers "deny, delay, defend" strategy.
Sure, one does not need a single, canonical univocal definition of "health" to do medicine or "life" to do biology. But surely biology starts from observing and thinking about living organisms and works backwards to "life," just as the doctor starts with instances of health and illness and works backwards to "health."
Would we ask a doctor to define health by starting with whether or not it is "non-natura,l" or might they start from pointing out the obvious difference between a man and a corpse?
We might think the general principle can be known better in itself than the particulars, because the particulars involve a tremendous amount of variation. That is, it is easier to explain why it is "wrong to cheat" then it is to track down all the casual consequences that flow from any one instance of cheating. I would claim though that we know this through, at least in part, by abstracting from the particulars to see what is common to them. Yet that doesn't mean we start from the most general.
For one, defining "non-natural" seems very difficult because there are many different, extremely broad definitions of "natural." Plus, goodness certainly seems to relate to everyday, natural things.
This is not true. This is your distortion on my point. I wrote about "happiness is not good, but what brings happiness is good". That doesn't mean happiness is not good quality of mind. It means happiness is NOT IDENTICAL TO good. Happiness and good are not the same thing. Happiness is a mental state and Good is a moral value which can cause happiness.
I am not sure if you were confused between happiness and Good, or your writing was intentional distortion on my points.
For the concept of Red, you don't learn the concept of Red by analysing what red means. You learn what red means by looking and seeing the red objects. So here is another gross misunderstanding on your part.
Just like the concept of red, you don't learn what the concept of Good is by analysing it. You learn the concept of Good, by seeing the good acts of humans in the moral situations.
I think I already wrote in my previous post somewhere. I looked into many philosophers in history for their idea of moral good. They are different, and there is not much content in the description what moral good is.
For example, Spinoza said moral good is pleasure, evil is pain. And Kant must have said something different, so did Leibniz etc etc. I was not quite sure why you insisted on starting defining Good in building someone's moral code. That doesn't sound like making sense at all. Even if the OP's title is about How to define Moral Good, you should have said moral good is undefinable, like Moore said 100 years ago.
This goes back to my point, which I think you may have misunderstood: the identity of a concept and its predication are two wholly separate things. To take your examples, you are absolutely right that we start, e.g., with the particulars of biology and induce/abduce what is healthy from it; but it is not true, to my point, that one can induce/abduce from biology in this manner what the concept of healthiness simpliciter is identical to. I must, in order to determine that such-and-such is healthy, import an understanding of what it means, simpliciter, for something to be healthy (viz., to be biologically functioning properly [according to the Telos {or functions} of the organism]). To your point, I cannot determine that this or that is healthy by purely analyzing the core concept of healthy and the property of healthiness (for I must analyze the particulars in question to do soe.g., this is a healthy human hand, a healthy bubonic plague, etc.); but it is necessary to have a concept of it before beginning that inductive/abductive process. Dont you agree?
Otherwise, it would be blind metaphysics. Viz., imagine you had to determine if a body was goobloobookoop without knowing whatsoever the concept referred to. Thats what I take you to do be saying, by saying that we work[s]s[/s] backwards to [e.g.,] life.
IMHO, this is the classic conflation between asking what can be said to be good? and what is goodness?; e.g., between what can be said to be healthy? and what is healthiness?.
I am not just advocating for the basic analysis of goodness though (in the sense of what I just described above); because that is not enough: it is also necessary to determine other meta-ethical concerns (like moral realism vs. anti-realism).
Thats because they already have an intuition about what is (morally) good which they are importing for their own apperception; and my point is that if they have never pondered what goodness is, then they are liable to having baseless intuitions. E.g., a Nazi child that were to grow up in Nazi Germany may very well intuit that turning in that jew knowing full well they will be slaughtered is the right thing to do; and, e.g., most post-modernists (these days) dont even think, when pushed on the subject, that torturing a baby for fun is actually wrong (because they are moral anti-realists)so are they really intuiting properly morally the situation or are the shadows and remnants of different moral realist theory rippling through their psyche?
Viz., although I may not press someone to give an account of what the concept of good is identical with; I will certainly have them answer the question of moral objectivism before having them ponder any normative ethical thought experiments. That is the biggest one (to me), because who cares if you think pulling the lever, e.g., is wrong if you only believe it is wrong because, e.g., you desire it to be the case?!?
I agree that people tend to do better working with the shadows, as Plato would put it, than the Ideas; but they are also equally liable to blind investigations if they skip steps in their analysis of things. E.g., going straight to applied ethics before normative ethics is no different than trying to shoot a cat in a pitch-dark room that might not even be there .
Red is a concept; redness is a property. Red is the concept, phenomenally, of that specific color which one has to see to intuit (what it is); and redness is the property of being red.
This seems backwards: the object has qualities; and the properties we assign it are the estimations of those qualities.
Agreed, we are analyzing being good, to be good, and what good means.
If I followed that correctly, then yes: we mean to investigate, metaethically, what the nature of the concept of good isviz., what it means for something, in principle, to be good.
Not necessarily. I was talking about how to think about ethics, to build up a theory. It could be that one is a, e.g., moral particularist and denies the legitimacy of rules whatsoever; or they could go to the other extreme and be a deontologist (like Kant); or be neither.
Likewise, they have to do with good, as a concept, insofar as they are considered good principles.
Goodness doesnt refer, in-itself, to human conductlet alone conduct: thats morality; and just because other people are doing something, does not make it right nor good to do it.
Thats impossible: the concept of good is absolute; like any other concept. Just like Truth.
This is not to say that moral absolutism is correct, because that family of theories holds that what can be predicated to be good for one thing, is good for all things; and all we are admitted here is that what it means for something to be good, irregardless of what is good for a thing, has to be the same concept applied to all things. E.g., when I attribute 'healthiness' to the human hand and the ant leg, I must be referring to the same property (otherwise, I should be using a different word to refer to each since they share nothing in common) although by saying the ant's leg is healthy and the human hand is healthy I am not implying that what is being attributed as healthy are the same things for each nor that they could cross-apply to each other.
I was talking about analyzing ethics.
There are objective goods and bads for ants, yes, but ants are not moral agents; because they do not have the sufficient rational capacities to rationally deliberate. I think you might to conflating metaethics with ethics proper: the former is more of a prerequisite for ethics, although we still count it as a part of the latter. Just because it is good for an ant to be such-and-such a way does not entail that there is anything ethical/moral going on; because morality refers to right and wrong behavior (and not what is good or bad). An analysis of goodness is more broad than an analysis of morality.
It depends on what you mean by happiness: I just mean the deep sense of fulfillment that comes with the organism functioning properly and within its proper (natural) roles and practices. Ants have happiness in that sense, because there is such a thing as a bad or good ant relative to what ants are supposed to be doing (which is relative to their nature as a species). A bad ant isnt going to live as well of a life as a good ant.
This seems like the same thing as saying happiness is the chief good in the sense I am using it because one is worthy of happiness, in my view, only when they are fulfilling their Telos; which means worthiness of happiness and being happy are interlinked to the point where one cannot come without the other. By happiness here, I mean the eudaimonic sense; which precludes shallow happiness like hedonic happiness.
Why? I dont understand. Happiness is not reducible to a principle: it is about living a virtuous life; which is about excellences (habits) of character.
Why? Likewise, I would like to point out that this is not an analysis of goodness itself: you are predicating the will as being good. So this cannot be identical to whatever goodness refers to; instead, you are importing some understanding of what, in principle, it would mean to be good and are attributing that to the will.
So Im driving along, in this cool-as-hell 67 Cobra, hair flyin, head-bangin to some classic Foghat turned up to 11 .happy as a pig in an overturned hotel restaurant dumpster.
The car isnt mine, I stole it.
And with that ..(Sigh)
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You are welcome to your philosophical inclinations, as anyone is, but obviously they are very far from mine. Not that thats a problem for either of us, only that theres little chance of meeting in the middle.
:lol:
You are confusing hedonic with eudaimonic happiness. It is important to remember that 'eudaimonia' does NOT accurately translate to any english word. Perhaps, it would help in this discussion to refer to it as well-being or flourishing instead?
When I quote you, then immediately respond relative to that quote, then you respond to my response with something suggesting my confusion, I wonder if youve missed the point of my response.
Different renditions of happiness aside, we are Western moderns after all, I shall consider it proved that worthiness of happiness and happiness itself, are very far from . Quoting Bob Ross .and sufficiently so, that it serves as the form of a rule rather than an example of an exception to it.
So if I have given the inkling of a rule, is it something you understand well enough to form an opinion? Or, tell me how it shouldnt be a rule in the first place?
Ok, I am not following then (:
I thought, by your example, worthiness of happiness referred to achieving true fulfillment by being worthy of it (hence why there is no true happiness in the pleasures obtained from stealing a car); and I was merely pointing out that this is eudaimonic happiness.
That's because by "happiness", you are referring to hedonism. The happiness being referred to in enjoying the stolen car is superficial, cheap dopamine. There is no true happiness in that, because it was not earned. Earned happiness, is eudaimonic happiness.
Cool. Point was pretty easy to make, truth be told. The point of superficial happiness, mere pleasure as it were, highlights a thing that makes that feeling possible, so we call it a good thing, even if it only good for that one thing ..making me love driving in a particular fashion.
But that still leaves me without the worthiness of that kind of happiness, that particular pleasure. Im happy but I cheated to be that way, so I dont deserve it. Seemed like a cool thing to do at the time but I regret it now, kinda thing.
I want to know what kinda thing it is, to be happy and deserve it. Its not enough to know what it is not, I want to know what it is. What happiness would I not regret, and by extension, what thing can I do that may not make me happy at all, but I dont regret having done it? Now the worthiness comes to the fore, in such case where I do a thing, feel anything but happy about, take no pleasure in the act, but remain happy .read as satisfied, content, undeterred, consistent with my virtues .with myself for the having the fortitude to act for the sake of good in itself.
Herein lay the ideal, re: the transcendental good in Kant, and a form of Nicomachean Ethics in Aristotle, combined with the pure practical reason as the means for determining those principles under which acts in accordance with those principles, are possible as volitions of the will. So says one moral philosophy amidst a veritable plethora of them.
Exactly. Aristotle doesnt call this kind of cheating happiness happiness at all; because the only way one becomes truly fulfilled in life, with the happiness which is deep, is by earning it. Like I noted before, by worthiness of happiness, you are necessarily using the term happiness to refer to this cheap dopamine kind of happiness and not what Aristotle means by happiness. This is just a semantic disagreement. If you use happiness in Aristotles sense, then worthiness of happiness is contained in the concept of happiness, being that it is the biproduct of earning it, and so it doesnt make sense to say this (technically) because it is impossible to be unworthy of such happiness and still be happy. This only makes sense if you are thinking of a hedonic sense of happiness which can happen independently of if one earns it. Eudaimonia is always earned: you cannot luck or cheat your way into it: happiness, in this sense, is always earned.
It is to realize the internal, objective goods to what you are. You will achieve that deep sense of fulfillmentthat eudaimonic happinessnot by cheap dopamine; not by cheating; not lucking into it; but by orientating yourself deliberately towards your Telos qua a human being, qua a man, qua a father, etc.
By analogy, think of chess. The internal goods of chess are things like strategic thinking, competition, quick strategizing, etc. as it relates to the game of chess (e.g., moving the pawns, knights, the queen, etc.) to win. A truly good chess player isnt merely gifted at the skills required in chessby some accident or predispositionbut also have to put in the work to learn and practice chess to the point that they are good at it. These learned skills (and perhaps innate skills which they may have been predisposed tolike critical thinking for high-IQ individualsas finely tuned to the specific practice of chess) are internal to the game: only chess players can call themselves as truly obtaining these internal goods. Someone who wins the chess tournament by constantly cheating has not acquired those internal goods even though they have won many matches; and the truly good chess players that they cheated to win have.
The same thing is true of life qua a human being: I can try to cheat my way into happinessby smoking this, taking this, having sex with her, partying like this, driving that stolen car, etc.but yet I will be no closer to happiness because I have not acquired the internal goods to being a human being. Think of those peaceful, wise elders: they have acquired happiness. I can gain higher social status, more money, more pleasures, etc. than them, and yet they are the ones with happiness because they didnt cheat nor did they try to luck their way into it. They followed the path of their Telos. E.g., I cannot cheat my way into being Just, which is a Virtue which is tied to my nature as having rational capacities (as a mind), and this is why I will not gain an inch closer to happiness by cheating people out of their money (even though I will gain many pleasures and powers from it). The man who earns their living fairly is the one that, all else being equal, is happy.
Not quite. This is very Kantian; but Aristotle is right to point out that it is not about taking no pleasure in the act; it is about taking pleasure in acts that are good; and displeasure in acts that are bad. What you described here is continence; and the pristine virtue here would be temperance. Continence is doing what one knows they should do irregardless of the feelings they have about it (and so, like you point out, the continent man does the right thing even if he has appetites to the contrary); whereas the temperate man doesnt have contrary appetites in the first place. The temperate man wants to do what is right; the continent man does what is right.
No he doesnt, but there isnt any doubt that I am happy. If I actually feel happy in the sense of pure pleasure, seems kinda silly for someone else to say Im not really. To be consistent along those lines, that someone else would also have to say I didnt really steal the car, insofar as the theft of the car is the necessary condition for the feeling. Its absurd to say I didnt steal the car, therefore the inconsistency is given.
I get the point.
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Quoting Bob Ross
Perhaps, but being ..you know, a Western modern ..I find it more the wiser, to point out the advantage in discerning, not so much whether an act dispenses pleasure or pain, but rather, the method by which any act of will leaves my moral integrity intact.
Why is it always one kind of hurt for the guy who owns the car, but a very different kind of hurt for me in the theft of it? Something as mediocre as displeasure isnt going to make the explanatory cut.
I see: you just have your own unique view of it...and there's nothing wrong with that (:
How, then, under your view, are you determining moral integrity? For Aristotle, the virtues are tide to our nature as a human being.
Whenever I hear this argument, I find it underwhelming. Parsing happiness into "the right kind" and "the wrong kind" seems both futile and subjective. How can we demonstrate that so-called low happiness (the version Aristotle might disapprove of in our interpretation of him) is qualitatively different? We cant, not really. Instead, were forced to return to behavior and evaluate it, not by the happiness or flourishing it supposedly provides, but by the act itselfwhich introduces a whole new set of problems.
Aristotle himself supported slavery and likely believed it contributed to the "right kind" of happiness/flourishing. This highlights the issue with attempting to parse happiness in such terms.
Probably better to just accept that humans act, and whether those actions are good or bad always depends on a contingent contextshaped by culture, language, and experience. The best we can do is reach an intersubjective agreement on morality and continuously scrutinize our actions to understand where our morality might lead us in an ongoing conversation.
Aristotle would call this pleasure.
(This is quite similar to the discussion @Count Timothy von Icarus and @J are having elsewhere.)
Actually the idea that some pleasures are intense but empty strikes me as a unanimous idea in both ethics and psychology. I think it would be hard to find an author on ethics or psychology who does not admit this. In fact, if one denies this idea, then ethics as a science looks to be unnecessary.
For example, why do we prohibit cocaine as a society? Because it is a base pleasure that deprives individuals and groups of deeper fulfillment.
The ubiquitous "bourgeoisie metaphysics" rears it's head again!
But Mww, if someone like St. Augustine, Boethius, or Plato are right, then it is your problem. It is your problem because you are depriving yourself of what is truly best and settling for inferior, counterfeit goods instead of the real deal.
And, we might presume that in your example, it is also the problem of the person whose car you stole :rofl: . But even on a more benign example, a person's friends and family, their employers, employees, and clients, their [I]potentia[/I] friends and clients, students, mentees, etc., the state and the organizations of which they are or might be a memberthese [I]all suffer[/I] when we fail to live up to our potential and do what is truly best because they miss out on what we [I]could[/I] be to them. So it's everyone's problem in some sense.
Imagine a world where everyone is their best, most virtuous, strongest, courageous, generous, wisest, enlightened, and self-actualized selves.
Theres nothing inherently wrong with the pleasure cocaine can provide. Many people I've known use it a few times a year with great satisfaction and wellbeing. Addiction to coke however is a problem. But so is an addiction to hard work. So is an addition to alcohol, which can also be used responsibly, with great happiness and pleasure.
Quoting Leontiskos
My point is that it's the action we judge, not the pleasure derived from it. I would hold that the pleasure experienced by a person who collects stolen artworks is likely identical to the pleasure experienced by one who buys art through Sotheby's. The issue at stake is should they derive pleasure from a crime? Not whether the feeling of pleasure arrived at is of a qualitative differnce. I am not convinced by the idea of an 'empty' pleasures.
My point is that the prohibition of cocaine (or methamphetamine or whatever you like) has everything to do with the drug use, and that the pleasure is an integral part of that drug use. Your idea that the prohibition of cocaine has nothing to do with the pleasure cocaine provides is what is implausible. If cocaine didn't provide pleasure we wouldn't ban it, because no one would use it.
I didn't address the prohibition of cocaine, I addressed the pleasure it provides and the notion of pleasure itself. In the US there used to be prohibition of alcohol too. Not any more. Presumably alcohol hasn't changed, while social policy has. Prohibition is irrelevant to my argument.
Let's move away from substances to take the excitement out of this idea.
Quoting Tom Storm
I think this is large subject. Most importantly, what is good: pure good or intelligent good? Is it good to have pleasure or it's good to have pleasure after work.
And what I mean by a large subject is:
What is a good car?
What is a good plane?
What is good food?
Infinite.
I dont know that my moral integrity remains intact until theres a call for its exhibition. The best I can do until then, is come up with a way in which it ought to work, given any case I am inclined to actively address. And the way itself, is to check the checker; for any act of will, check for its accordance with a principle. The quote I used, re: tide, merely demonstrates that people generally are not, or at least seldom, inclined to enforce such subjective legislation.
Through metaphysical reductionism, from volitions in accordance with principles results the good as the ideal of pure practical reason, which answers the question, how do you define good. Although not a proper definition also wasnt ever a proper question anyway but oh well, right? .. it becomes clear, under certain theoretical conditions, why there isnt going to be one, and furthermore, why theres no need for it.
:up:
Just look at the species. There are objectively better and worse ways for, e.g., a lion to be happy because we can observe how they are designed and recognize patterns in behavior that lead to deeper happiness for healthy lions. Humans are no different. We have had plenty of history to determine what tends to lead towards happiness and what doesnt for humans.
Aristotle doesnt: he doesnt use the term happiness. Eudaimonia is not identical to the english word happiness. In english, it can refer vaguely to both superficial, hedonic happiness and the deeper, eudaimonic happiness. Aristotle simply says that the best is eudaimonia, which is soul-living-well, and everyone wants this that are healthy and sane merely in virtue of being an living being. If you dont want to live well, ceteris paribus, then somethings wrong with you. Likewise, the objective goods to being a good human is such that, and necessarily such that, one fulfills their nature qua a human being; and this is why, necessarily, a human gets that deep sense of fulfillment from things that are in human nature to do (except in rare cases of unhealthy and ill people).
And he was wrong about that: so what?
No it doesnt. It highlights that not even philosophers are exempt from the coercion of their historical time period. This happens to every philosopher throughout all history: they make compromises so they dont get killed or simply believe also themselves (due to how they were raised).
I wouldnt say always; but this is by-at-large true; and doesnt negate Aristotles point.
This is self-undermining: if we assume there are objective goods but that, according to you, we cannot parse them properly, then we would be incapable of having an ongoing conversation where we scrutinize our actions objectively or intersubjectively. All it would be then, is baseless inter-subjective agreement; which is nothing but a moral anti-realist theory which should be disregarded immediately.
We must, in order to do ethics proper, be able to understand, however imperfectly, sufficiently these objective goods.
This didn't answer my question though: under your view, how does one evaluate what is a good or bad will? And why is the will the only thing that is truly morally relevant, and not habits?
Im aware; I left a scant two cents there a few days ago.
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Quoting Leontiskos
True enough. and I understand the symbiosis on the one hand and the conceptual evolution on the other.
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Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
From the perspective of a case-by-case basis, have I not determined by myself the best for myself, in granting his personal philosophy irrespective of my possible disagreement with it, and, asking for his opinion of mine, irrespective of whether or not I think hes understood it? Doesnt this demonstrate that, at the very least, I am aware of how arrive at such determinations in this case, which would then serve as sufficient reason for consciousness of how to arrive at them in any case?
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Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
You mean like one of these possible worlds the postmodern analytical mindset deems so relevant? Dunno about all that pathological nonsense, except Ill wager that world wouldnt be inhabited by the humans commonly understood as such, by themselves.
So it is that, the circumventing of my own deprivation does nothing to show St. Augustine, Boethius, or Plato are right, which is indeed possible, but only that I am, which is apodeitically certain. And from that point of view .the only one that really matters .there is the ideal of good from pure practical reason.
Hows that for bourgeoisie metaphysics? Consign it to the flames?
I might expand to say that a word represents a property of actions, good is a word that represents a property of actions, quality is a property of actions, therefore good is a word that represents the quality of actions.
Does that expansion diminish your point? Hopefully not too much anyway, cuz I agree with your major point.
We have agreement there.
Quoting Mww
It seems to supplement my point with more accuracy.
Hey people exploded on us. We got somebodys attention, it seems. Was it our intellectually piercing dialectic, or were they just bored with what they were doing?
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Quoting Bob Ross
Oh, thats easy: the goodness or badness of the will is a direct reflection on the worthiness of being content with ones subjective condition, which is commonly called being happy, which is itself the prime condition for moral integrity. The one willing an act in defiance of his principles would post hoc evaluate his will as bad, earning himself the title of immoral.
It is only under the apodeictic presupposition of a good will, that immoral practices are possible. On the other hand, if the will is neutral or bad, it becomes nearly impossible to explain why the predisposition of humans in general, given from historical precedence, is to do good, to act virtuously.
Cool. Gotta love it when a plan comes together.
Great to have an agreement here. Thanks.
I couldn't quite parse what you were trying to say. Is the contention that individuals always know what is best for them and what is true [I]for them[/I] vis-á-vis ethics?
No, I mean it just in the common sense that we have the potential to be/do things we currently aren't/can't. I can play the guitar and bass. At one point I couldn't, but I obviously had the potential to learn in some sense. I can't play the violin, but potentially I could learn to do so. Likewise, someone who regularly drives drunk could potentially stop doing this, etc.
True dat .but much more fun to figure out why, both that it is barmy, and in addition, the incessant supposition its necessary.
Not for most ethics. It is things, not acts that are primarily good. One can have a "good car," a "good doctor," a "good government," or a "good person" living a "good life."
An ethics where "moral good" is some sort of distinct property unrelated to these other uses of good and which primarily applies only to human acts seems doomed to failure IMHO, because it cannot explain what this "good" has to do with anything else that is desirable and choice-worthy.
On the prevailing view that dominated in the West for over a millennia, all good things or things that appear good are good in virtue of their possession/participation of the goodness of God, who is goodness itself for example.
For example, St. Augustine' De Doctrina Christiana (Chapter 22):
Good point. This is where Kant's practical reason comes in. Kant says that you know by human nature what morally good acts are in your heart and mind. He said something like this in his writings,
"In the sky, you see the stars shinning. In your mind, you know what the moral good actions are."
You don't need a thick tome of ethic book with the abstract definitions of what moral Good is, or what things or who are morally good. You know what morally good actions are by reflecting the situations and actions you must take out of the moral duty, which you understand by the practical reason.
Or devolution? Either way, I think the distinction between pleasure and happiness is still alive in our contemporary lexicon, and it avoids these arguments about happiness vs. happiness.
Not ethically, insofar as ethics carries the implication of external authority, re: jurisprudence, and my knowledge of what is best for me merely keeps me out of jail. If I do not accept the truth of external jurisprudence, I am entitled to simply remove myself from it, which makes that truth contingent on whether or not I am suited to it.
Knowing whats best for me, on a much stricter sense, is an internal necessary truth, carries the implication of an internal authority alone, the escape from which is, of course, quite impossible. Being human, and given a specific theoretical exposition, yes, individuals always know what is best for himself, and he certainly knows what is true, because he alone is the cause of what he knows as best for him.
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Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
We do in fact have the capacity to acquire skills. I admit we do have the capacity, the potential, to do things we currently wouldnt consider possible. I wont deny myself the capacity to cheat on speed limits which experience affirms and from which the potential stands, but experience proves I will deny myself the capacity for cutting off lil ol ladies in the checkout line, and from which the potential has always fallen but may not always. Doesnt all that make common sense attributions rather lacking in explanatory power?
On the other hand, I do know I have the capacity to throw the trolley switch, I do know my moral constitution or agency proper, mandates that I will not, but I do not know, given the immediate occassion, whether or not that act manifests through my will. Which sorta IS the point, re: explanatory power for determining acts can never be found in capacity for acting, but only in that by which originates the determinations themselves.
Oooo devolution. I like that better. Aristotle = eudaimonia with or without arete, and Kantian happiness writ large, re: contentment with ones subjective condition .
Sure, the distinction between pleasure and happiness is alive and relatively well presently, insofar as pleasure is the primary conception of the singular positive feeling, happiness being one of many subsumed under it. Right? Is that what youre getting at?
Absolutely. And from which arises my primary contention herein, that knowing what good acts are makes explicit you know what good is. And comes the notion that asking what is good, was never the right question to ask.
Fully agree with you. That was my whole point. Plus the sense of moral good changes from / to different cultures, and different historical times. The practical reason will always remind the above facts to the thinker in his / her moral reasoning.
So what do you think of Plato's response to Protagoras' similar position in the Theaetetus, that philosophers and teachers are worthless if we can never be mistaken about what is best for us?
And how might we explain the ubiquitous human experience of regret, where we think that what we thought was best for us, has turned out (by our own admission) not to be? Is it best for us to drink all those whiskeys when we think it's a great idea at night, and then the same act that was good for us transforms into being bad for us when we wake up with a hangover?
When we throw our life's savings into a crypto scheme and promptly lose it in a rug pull, was the person who told us not invest not more right about what was good for us than we were?
No. I don't think you are following. I don't accept there are objective goods (your term). Society engages in an ongoing conversation about a 'code of conduct' and who counts as a citizen - this evolves and is subject to changes over time. Hence gay people are now citizens (in the West), whereas some years ago they were criminals. And who knows where this conversation will go under Trump. In other countries, gay people may still be killed. Humans determine notions of right and wrong pragmatically, based on evolving values,
ideals and situations. And the journey isn't one way, ideas like justice or fairness are constantly in flux.
Quoting Bob Ross
Happiness will do. Eudaemonia is just one construct and to me it seems tied to an ancient, culturally specific framework of virtues and reason, which may or may not be of use today. I personally don't find this helpful.
No, I don't think happiness is one species of pleasure. Think of an exchange like this:
That exchange is as meaningful now as it was 2500 years ago. This constant claim that our word "happiness" primarily means something superficial looks to be simply wrong.
We can never be mistaken about whats best for ourselves iff we alone are the causality for it. We can be, and often are, mistaken in choosing to act in opposition to what is best. Philosophers and teachers have nothing to do with all that, except perhaps in the formulation of a speculative theory that explains how it all happens.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Thats just the feeling one gets from a post hoc judgement that hes chosen an act in opposition to what he knows is best. The proverbial easy way out .
Son: I think so. Certainly happier than you in your passive-aggressive and destructive marriage. :wink:
Curious, I never said either of those two things.
Why wouldnt the son just say oh HELL yeah Im happy!!! Being a kid, he doesnt consider it as being given pleasure, but only being given that by which pleasure in him just happens to be a consequence.
I mean, even if happiness is merely a subjective condition represented by contentment, contentment itself is no less a feeling of pleasure.
For me it is the act we are questioning and whether this should or should not provide a person with satisfaction. My own view is that a career criminal may well have a more pleasurable and satisfying life than a 'saint'. Knowing this is probably why humans constructed notions of heaven and hell, since there are not always consequences for crimes on earth.
My joke above, following the quote about the use of bought sex, is simply an observation that there is no recipe for happiness and a rewarding life. Discrete use of sex workers for pleasure might lead to someone's overall flourishing, while a marriage (which some might like to present as a virtuous contrast to naughty prostitution) might be like dying inside. Life is not simple.
Agreed. That you use satisfaction, or I use contentment, we are in principle saying the same thing. To be a perfectly moral agent is to act, regardless of circumstance, only in accordance with that which provides satisfaction for the agent. Humans rarely do that regardless of circumstance, being influenced by everything from peer pressure to superficial personal gratifications, mere desires.
With that being said, I rather think it is the reason for the act needing the closest examination. It is, after all, my act, determined by my reason, so I am the acts causality. Thats the easy part; it remains to be explained what reason uses to make these determinations. Hence .moral philosophy.
I wonder however you arrived at this? Name calling too. That's called strange. doesn't seem to be having any trouble following.
Quoting Mww
I'll mull this over. I am happy to be convinced to change my view. :up:
Quoting Mww I'm somewhat skeptical of this idea, but I understand its attractions and history.
No, it's called true. Saying things you don't believe is lying, whether you like it or not.
You're engaged in a lot of sophistry in this thread. Here's the question:
Quoting Leontiskos
Do you have an honest answer?
:wink:
Where did the cocaine come in to the conversation? I thought they were talking about prostitution...
But when a few drugs were decriminalised in Canberra a year ago, it was predicted to be the begining of the end.... It wasn't.
An prostitution has long been legal here.
Indeed.
Cocaine was named as a base pleasure. I said this:
Quoting Tom Storm
Apparently this means I want to legalize cocaine. :wink: I have made no comments about legalization.
I do have a problem with people talking about good pleasures versus base pleasures. My point is it's the act that has the moral dimension, not the pleasure. But really I'm just asking questions. I don't think using alcohol or drugs for fun is necessarily a moral question.
Above and beyond this, I also think that it is possible for an immoral person (however we understand this) to live a happy and rewarding life. I do not mean this as an endorsement (although surely this is an unnecessary qualifier).
Our conversation became so spectacular, that they couldnt help themselves but join in (;
I understand that you are claiming that being worthy of happiness is directly related to having a good will; but I am asking what makes a will good?
But what, under your view, makes those principles right? Someone, surely, can will in accordance with their principles, thereby gaining at least a shallow sense of happiness, without willing in accordance with what is right.
1. Then, you are a moral anti-realist; and no one should take your view seriously; because all you are saying is that what is right or wrong is stance-dependent. So if, e.g., I want to do something you consider wrong, or others consider wrong, then there is absolutely no fact-of-the-matter that makes me wrong: I am just as right as you are (objectively speaking).
2. One can accept that there are objective goods AND that society is a power-related structure. The idea that some people are exhalted as heroes and those very same people criminals by others just highlights that humans are creating laws; and does not negate the fact that humans should be creating laws which abide by facticity. Under your view, those laws are non-factual; because there are no moral facts.
Exactly the way I see it. Which makes .you know .two of us.
Quoting Bob Ross
Im a fan of metaphysical reductionism, that is, reduce propositions to the lowest form of principles which suffice to ground the conceptions represented in the propositions, and, justify the relation of those conceptions to each other. Which is fine, but comes with the inherent danger of reducing beyond such justifications, often into relations irrational on the one hand and not even possible on the other, from the propositions themselves. The proverbial transcendental illusion, the only way out of which, is just dont reduce further than needed.
And this is what happens when asking what makes a will good. If whatever makes the will good, can be represented as merely some necessary presupposition, it doesnt matter what specifically is the case. It is enough to comprehend with apodeitic certainty that it is possible for there to be a root of what good is, hence it is non-contradictory, hence possibly true, the will just is the case. This is where it is proper for the common understanding to rest assured.
After having desolved the question of what makes a will good, it remains to be determined at least the conditions by which the possibility of its being good in itself, is given, which is the domain of the philosopher of metaphysics. These conditions are evidenced, and the case that there is such a thing as a will that is good in itself obtains, by the relevant activities of humanity in general, evil being the exception to the rule.
It is impossible to determine what it is exactly that makes the will good, for the simple reason it is impossible to determine exactly what the will is, which makes any scientific use of the principle of cause and effect in its empirical form useless. Best the metaphysician can do, is attribute certain rational constructs to the idea of a will, sufficient to explain mans relevant activities, then speculate on the more parsimonious, the most logical, method by which those constructs originate, from which, as it so happens, arises Kantian transcendental logic.
That logic, then, while saying nothing about what makes a will good, is quite specific in a purely speculative fashion, with respect to the principles enabling the will to be that which is directly that faculty responsible for making the man a good man, by his proper use of it, and to whom is attributed moral agency.
The transcendental necessary presupposition: there is no good, in, of and for itself, other than the good will.
The form of transcendental principles: maxims, imperatives.
The transcendental logics original constructs: freedom, and autonomy.
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Right has nothing to do with good, but only with a good, or the good.
Anyway .food for thought. Or confusion. Take your pick.
That seems a rather limited way of interpreting my point. I did not say anything goes. I said humans come to agreements about what morality is and follow this right down to crafting legislation. For the most part, I am comfortable to live in a world with a code of conduct and one that provides consequences for those how step outside it.
Morality doesn't have to involve moral facts to provide social cohesion. predictability and harm minimisation. It's pragmatic and evolving.
Collectively we arrive at right and wrong through an intersubjective agreement. In other words cultures arrive at values, from a myriad sources. And we know there will always be outliers. We know that the idea for who counts is a full citizen has varied over time, as culture and values change. In the West, slavery is no longer acceptable, but it is acceptable to exploit and underpay workers to keep the rich person's housework and maintenance done. We no longer criminalise and imprison gay people or trans people. Although some elements of society seem to want to punish them again. Our agreements are not necessarily permanent.
For me this seems to be an ongoing conversation. There are no facts we can access about values, just agreements made about what we value together and what conduct we will accept. It's imperfect but I see nothing wrong with this. We don't need 'true' or objective morality to build a useful system.
Quoting Bob Ross
Who mentioned power-related structures? Or heroes? I agree that the laws are non-factual. But I do not see this as a limitation, as you do. I don't go looking for absolute truth or foundational guarantees in the world because I am not convinced such things exist.
To whom? To the slaves? To the masters?
According to you, it isn't actually wrong, e.g., to own slaves. All society is doing, is deciding that they don't like it anymore.
That is what you are referring to without realizing it:
What you are noting is correct, insofar as it outlines how human social structures work, which are inherently power-structures, but the problem is that you gutted out the part where we are actually developing better social structures because they are ethically superior to previous ones. According to you, there is no true moral progress: apparently, abolishing slavery wasn't objectively better.
We are talking about moral judgments, not value judgments.
I don't either.
Nothing about this explained why the will is good, am I missing something? You went from the will can be good to saying it cannot be determined what makes a will good. Again, I want to know why you believe that a will is good in any sense whatsoever. Why, e.g., can a habit not be good or bad?
E.g., I believe a will is good if it is virtuous; because objective goods are internal to the Teleological structure of the thing in question, morality pertains to the Teleological structure of agency, and so a good person will be any person which is fulfilling the Teleology of a person in a manner where they have excellences of habit which allow them to do so in the most ideal manner. A will, then, is good IFF it is comprised, habitually and deeply psychologically, of those excellences that allow them to realize and preserve those internal, objective goods. Viz., I can achieve the internal goods to being a human, which revolve around eudaimonia (as the chief good), IFF I have a will which habituates towards what allows me to do what a human was designed to do.
I would like some sort of elaboration, if possible, analogously, of what you saying makes the will good. If the answer is that we cannot say, then you have no reason to believe that a will can be good.
I addressed that very concern: the evidence that humanity in general determines good acts, is sufficient reason to think the will as good. I only said there is no scientific cause/effect evidence for the will itself, which is to say there is objective or empirical knowledge of it.
Depends on the society. Obviously in 1830's America, to the masters. But the conversation changed. There's a general thrust in the West for egalitarianism and greater solidarity. We all seem to agree with this except when we don't, when perhaps it involves people of colour, Muslims, or women or trans folk, we might not consider solidarity relevant and call any consideration of such people 'woke'.
We mostly all know how this works.
Quoting Bob Ross
Only subject to certain purposes and values, right? I might share with you ideals of emancipatory humanism and by this frame we might both consider human rights imperative. Great.
But we all need to agree that this is the best way to achieve human flourishing or wellbeing or whatever you consider your foundational value to be. In choosing this, you are not being objective, nor is there agreement about what constitutes flourishing/wellbeing.
Now there might be some argument to suggest that if you decide that preventing suffering is your foundational goal then Marxism might be the best approach, or Islam. But of course we don't agree on this, hence the problem. Are there objective ways to reach a goal once you have arbitrarily chosen one? Perhaps. Is this what you are arguing for?
I obviously belong to a cultural tradition and have, like most humans, evolved as part of a social species - so for this reason nurturing, tribal identification, caring for others, collaboration, protecting the weak, is hard wired in me and most of us (unless, perhaps you grow up in a war zone). But even this is provisional and contingent.
I see. Lets put it into a syllogism:
P1: What determines what is good grounds what is good.
P2: Agents determine what is good.
C: Agents are the grounds for what is good.
This is a equivocation between ontology and epistemology: that agents can come to know what is good, has no bearing in-itself on what actually is good.
But according to you we dont agree that it is actually better: we just subjectively like it more, whereas the masters subjectively liked their society more.
Heres another gigantic issue with moral anti-realism: theres no way to resolve these disagreements. The people, according to you, that are racist are no less right or wrong than those that want to eradicate it; so what exactly is one conveying to the racist when telling him he is wrong? Absolutely nothing but Hey, I dont like that you are doing that, and for some reason I think that you should abide by my feelings.
Which we cant do in a rational way if there are no moral facts. That would explode into meaningless expressions of subjective dispositions.
By power-structure, I was noting, and conceding, that you are absolutely right that human social structures are inherently hierarchical; and so those with the power dictate the rules (so to speak); and so there are human-interaction (social) dynamics to things that very well may not be orientated towards facticity; but I was also noting that there are moral facts, and these are the sort of facts which would dictate what a better world, a better social order, would look like. When people disagree ethically, they are either disagreeing about the truth of the matter or they are expressing meaningless non-objective dispositions they have. In the case of the latter, there may be legitimate disagreement if they subjectively agree on some maxim(s); but theres not true disagreements because there are no facts. I say I like vanilla ice cream, you say I dont like vanilla ice creamwhos wrong? Neither.
But take heart: you started a good thread (discussion). Good credit to you!
My advice is to aim for simple and down to earth, as you think about the topic "How to Define Good". As time goes on, you will see where you can be more nuanced.
I understand what youre saying, but theres a conceptual divide in place. Ontology as you intend the concept, has to do with things, what is and why, how, etc, of them. Epistemology, by the same token, has to do with the method, and the system using that method, belonging to a certain kind of intelligence, for knowing about those things subsumed under the conception of natural ontology.
Those dont work for whats going on here. Ontology, insofar as for that Nature is causality, and the human subject is the intelligence that knows only what Nature provides.
For whats going on here, the subject himself is the causality, and of those of which he is the cause it isnt that he knows of them, but rather that he reasons to them. It makes no sense to say he knows, of that which fully and immediately belongs to him alone.
This is where that thing I said about feelings not being cognitions, fits. And also, why everything were talking about here is of a far different systemic formalism. And while it is true we need that standard discursive epistemology to talk about this stuff, and we need the standard phenomenal ontology to properly deploy it for its intended purpose, there is no need of either in its development, in first-person internal immediacy.
What good is, is only determinable by moral philosophy, in which hypotheticals and mere examples have no say.
Quoting Bob Ross
There is no agreement on how morality works right now and yet we have morality and it mostly works. Cultures argue about morality all the time and have ongoing conversations about what they beleive and how to live better. So morality already functions the way I am suggesting. Western societies tend to balance pluralism. We do not have an agreed upon way to resolve disagreements, we just have a discourse.
Western societies usually seem to set wellbeing or flourishing as a goal. What is best for people and culture. But there will never be agreement on how to get there or indeed what precisely flourishing entails. But it's close enough.
Quoting Bob Ross
No, it's more than a mere like/dislike. Just because there are no moral truths, doesn't mean there's no reasoning involved.
My current belief is that there are no moral facts but I believe morality is useful pragmatically - people (mostly) feel empathy for others and they generally want a predictable, safe society. They want to be able to raise families, pursue interests, have relationships and achieve goals. They want codes of conduct that allow for this. That's what morality is. Like traffic lights. There's nothing inherently true about road rules but they provide us with systems of safety and allow for the possibility of effective road use. And we can still debate which rules work best for certain purposes.
I would say it is a conflation between ontology and epistemology but I realized this is just begging the question in our case; because you deny this distinction exactly due to the fact that you dont think there is anything about how reality is that can dictate out it ought to be. Of course, the moral anti-realist has to note that the ontology of morality is really just grounded in the projections of subjects; and this is exactly what I understand you to be saying by noting that the wills of subjects are introduce new chains of causality into the world and are not themselves causal.
I dont disagree that willing is inherently negativity (as hegel would put it) and, as such, does not itself originate out of causality; but this still doesnt answer my question.
You have to provide some argument for why the will is good, and not merely the introducer of new chains of causality. So far, this is what I see you as arguing:
P1: A thing which produces new chains of causality and of which is not causal itself is good.
P2: Willing produces new chains of causality and is not causal itself.
C: Willing is good.
Again, in P1, why is it good? What grounds as good?
You too, my friend!
The key here is that you are not merely noting that there is moral disagreement: you are noting that there is no disagreement whatsoever about facts. This is not, by any moral realists lights, what is going on in society. The mere fact of moral disagreement doesnt suggest itself that there are no moral facts; and, on the contrary, I would say that it suggests that people behave as if there are. Imagine you didnt believe that it was actually wrong to, e.g., torture babies for funin all probability, you wouldnt try to stop anyone who likes torturing babies for fun, nor would you try to codify its prohibition into law. In practice, what you are claiming would like more akin to two people arguing about their favorite flavor of ice cream: we may have an interesting discussionwe may even make progress towards bettering our own subjective tastes on itbut at the end of the day we wouldnt say either or us are wrong nor that we should impose our tastes on each other. Most importantly: this is NOT how people behave about ethics.
According to you, again, well-being isnt actually good: its just, at best, what everyone mostly wants to be the case. So, why should anyone who disagrees care? Is Hitler wrong, then? Under your view, he has no reason, other than his own subjective dispositions, to change his mind.
Ultimately, it is; because it is not grounded in truth. E.g., I can refine my cooking to better accommodate my tastes, but there is absolutely nothing factual going on here at its core. There are facts about what I like, but what I like is dictating what I am doingnot some fact out there (ultimately).
Yes, but, again, if a society were to emerge which didnt care about those thingsor even had anti-thetical values (like mass genocide, torturing, etc.)then they wouldnt be wrong according to you.
For me, people tend towards, assuming their environment isnt heavily influencing them to the contrary, what is actually good because they tend to be healthy members of the human species; and healthy members of the human species have rational capacities that require of them to be impartial and just.
Well, theres plenty of things that are factual about laws; but, to your point, they are grounded in something elsewhat is it, then? Morality as it relates to Justice: the polis. Having no vehicle laws, for me, is ultimately about allowing people to drive around safely because that is a part of a better society (objectively).
I'll conclude (for now) with a few points here.
Quoting Bob Ross
Hitler and many of his supporters probably thought they were doing good and were promoting flourishing as they saw it.
I have no problem stating that I am against Nazi values and their approach, but I don't believe there are objective moral facts about it. Nazi ideology contradicts most human conventions and behaviors, causes needless suffering, and is inherently unstable for society. What more justification do you need?
In the absence of moral facts morality shifts from being about discovering "truths" to constructing frameworks that work for individuals and communities. As I have already argued, humans mostly have concern for others and want predictability, safety, resources.
Quoting Bob Ross
Why should anyone care even if there are moral facts? Religious believers still commit crimes/sins even while they believe god is watching and will judge them. Makes no difference. Some people will do what they want regardless. What magic do you suppose a 'moral fact' has to compel anyone to do anything?
It sounds to me like you want to identify moral facts so you can dismiss any ethical positions you disagree with by appealing to 'truth' as the ultimate criterion. I'm curious - do you also wish to criminalize behaviors that dont align with your truth criteria? Whats your end goal here?
Quoting Bob Ross
This is a common rebuttal and I think this gets my position wrong. Rather more is at stake than flavor. We are not isolated nomads, indifferent to the fates of others. Just consider what it is to be a person. We are all invoked in webs of affinity and webs of sympathy and acquaintance. We are connected to others. We dont (generally) want others to suffer. We are a social species. We support behaviors which support such human dispositions.
Because it enables us to enact what is actually good; and anyone who doesnt want to enact what is good must be either evil, ignorant, or a lunatic. Dont you agree?
Moral realists can still do bad things, but this is either because they themselves choose to disobey what is wrong or the moral facts they believe are not entirely factual. My main point is that, in this case, at least I can admit that those kind of people are wrong (e.g., Hitler); whereas you cant.
No it doesnt. That is a moral judgment you are making hereviz., that society should construct itself to work for its communitiesbut there is absolutely no fact-of-the-matter that dictates that either. Morality, under your view, becomes people trying to impose their own subjective dispositions on those that are weaker than themthats it.
A person that comes around and says, e.g., that morality should be, under moral anti-realism, about allowing the ruling elite to do as they please (and for the servants and slave classes to obey) is equally as right as you are; and equally wrong.
We shape society on rationality, which requires of itself factual interpretations of situations; and of which is relative to objective, impartial reasons for or against. Our entire legal system is predicated off of this .
What you are saying is that people should start being biased and subjective about their reasons for or against how society behaves .
Truth is the ultimate criterion. Let me ask you this: if I were forcing vanilla ice cream down a childs throat screaming at them that I dont care what you say, you should like vanilla ice cream!!!; wouldn't you stop me because it is true that I should not be forcing my own subjective dispositions on another person (let alone a child)?
Now youve shifted the conversation from truth being the ultimate criterion to what criteria of truth one holds, which is different. I dont expect everyone to have the exact same theory of truth as I have, but I do expect them to intuitionally have something similar. Most people agree and understand, e.g., that truth is objective and absoluteand even if they dont they behave as if it isand that we should not impose our own feelings on other people: that would be irrational.
So, then, if we by-at-large hate the jews; then we would be correct to extinguish them under your view. Its the same glaring issue over and over again.
I wouldnt agree with that. If I judge something perceived as offensive to my moral sensibilities, it is possible I may determine an act whereby that offense is rectified, which is the same as changing reality into what I feel it ought to be.
Quoting Bob Ross
Dunno about moral anti-realists, but as far as Im concerned, morality doesnt have an ontology, in the commons sense of the conception. On the other hand, Im ok with the projection of subjects being the exemplification, or the objectification, of their respective moral determinations.
But this arena is anthropology, or clinical psychology, whereas Im only interested in moral philosophy itself. Just like in cognitive systems: its not that we know, its how it is that we know; so too in moral systems, its not that we are moral, but how it is that are we moral.
Quoting Bob Ross
Hmmmm. Backwards? The will of subjects is causal, insofar as it determines what a moral act shall be, in accordance with the those conditions intrinsic to individual moral constitution. But the will cannot itself project that act onto the world, insofar as any act requires physical motivations. The missing piece, or, the controlling factor lets say, between the determination of a moral act and the projection of it, is aesthetic judgement, re:, does the feeling I get from the effect of this act reflect the feeling I get from the cause.
See the problem? The feeling of good in having willed a moral act does not necessarily match the feeling of good in having done it. And that is the mark of ideal moral agency: the only act willed is always good, the aesthetic judgement will always be positive, the act shall be done without regard to the consequential feeling of having done it.
Hence, the ideal of pure practical reason, and the ground of what makes a will good, doesnt have an answer, the philosophy describing its function justifiably predicated on it being so.
No. I don't think things are as simple as this. But it tells me a lot about why this model appeals to you. You appear to be an absolutist.
Quoting Bob Ross
Curious that you miss the point over and over again. It's this.
Quoting Tom Storm
I have consistently argued that morality functions pragmatically and aims to provide a safe, predictable community that minimizes suffering. The fact that you keep arguing that I might just as well advocate anti-social or violent behaviour is absurd.
Your argument is similar to those religious apologists who maintain that if there wasn't a god there would be no morality and people would steal and lie and murder all over because only god can guarantee morality. Looks like you have just substituted god for the abstraction, truth.
Can we explore an example of a moral truth? What objective truth underpins the notion that stealing is wrong?
I am sorry Mww, I still have no clue why you believe that the will is good :sad:
It seems like you are taking the position that nothing is objectively good.
What do you think an moral absolutist is?
It didnt in Nazi Germany; and if it werent for the Allies winning, then most of the world would be just like it.
History doesnt corroborate your position: rather, it tends to function as a tendency towards flourishing for an in-group. There have been tons of societies that do not generally care about the suffering of other people outside of their own group.
I am not saying that you like people being violent: I am saying that your view entails that people who are violent arent wrong for doing that; and that societies have not historically had a general disposition towards the well-being of humans...not even close. Heck, there was a huge span of history where entire classes of peoples were slaves ..
What I am saying is that if there is no moral truth, then anything could be permissible relative to any given persons subjective dispositions.
Now, with respect to this:
Not quite. I dont think that people historically become immediately radically different if they disbelieve in moral realism; in fact, they tend to re-create basic moral realist intuitions into an attempted moral anti-realist substitute.
However, the reason these people dont dramatically change, is because humans tend to be sheep. They are so influenced by their environment that their conscience ends up a reflection of their societys conscience. Thats, IMHO, why they dont start pillaging when they dont believe, e.g., that it is actually wrong to pillage; because they dont like the idea of pillaging (or what not) because they have the conscience of the historical context in which they are. Only few people in society think truly for themselves, to the point that they are willing to stand up straightnot straightened.
We absolutely can. Lets just take your example, since you mentioned it:
For all intents and purposes hereon, I will refer to stealing as the purposeful and unlawful possession of another persons (private) property. There are other definitions, and feel free to bring them up if you find them relevant, but I think this one will suffice.
Objective goods arise out of the teleological structures to which they refer; that is, they are goods which are objective because they are goods for and of the given teleological structure which are not good relative to anything stance-dependent.
The basic example I like to give is basketball. Is Lebron a good basketball player? Most people would say yes (and even if you dont agree, just grant it for my point here). Heres the interesting question though: is Lebron a good basketball player because one wants it to be the case that he is? No. Even if one yearns, desires, wishes, etc. for Lebron to be the worst basketball player in the world, that does not make it so; nor does it negate the fact that if he is placed on a court he will dominate. Is Lebron a good basketball player because ones mere belief that he is makes it so? No. Even if one believes that Lebron is a terrible basketball player, that does not make it so; nor does it negate that he will dominate on the court. Is Lebron a good basketball player because we all agree he is? No. Everyone in the world could decide right now that Lebron sucks at basketball and it would still be true that he will dominate the court. The fact that Lebron is good at basketball is true stance-independentlythusly objectively. The goodness then, which Lebron exhibits, as it relates to basketball, is objective.
Now, someone might bring up the glaringly obvious fact that we invented basketball; but this doesnt negate the above point. We could re-define basketballviz., change all its rulesspecifically so that it is true that Lebron sucks at basketball (now); but what the gamethe teleological structurewhich was historically called basketball is something Lebron is actually good atviz., objectively good at.
What we can see here, is that we have a form of moral objectivism which is a form of moral relativism; whereof each objective good is relativistic to some teleological structure such that what is good is fundamentally about what best suits and sizes up to the teleology of it.
So, likewise, we could easily apply this to anything with a teleological structure. Whats a good clock? Presumably, among other things (perhaps), one that can tell the time appropriately. Whats a good chair? Presumably, among other things (perhaps), one that a person can rest on by sitting on it. Whats a good human? One that is properly behaving in accordance with what a human is designed to do. What is a human designed to do? Biology and philosophy (about our nature) tells us that.
We see here that this view inherently admits of evolutionary teleology, which is a hot take these days, so let me speak a few words on that real quick. The idea that biology supplies us with teleology has lost all credence nowadays, but it is easily recoverable by understanding that we behave as if it does provide a telos. For example, when one goes into the doctors office and says my hand is acting poorly: it wont move properly; this analogous to the good basketball player example. One is not conveying, in normal speech, that their hand is behaving poorly only because they wish it worked differently. They are not expressing that it is behaving poorlythat it is being a bad handmerely because their own belief that it is makes it so. No, no, no. They are saying that (1) there is a way that a human hand is supposed to work (viz., there is a teleology of a human hand) and (2) their hand is not sizing up properly to it. This becomes a much bigger problem for moral anti-realists that is often admitted (in my experience); because they have to claim, in order to be consistent, that when we go to the doctor complaining about our bodies not working properly (viz., not working in a healthy manner) that we are speaking purely about non-normative facts; which entails that, e.g., my hand isnt working properly like a hand should is truly incorrect, colloquial shorthand for ~my hand isnt working like I would like it to [or like we all agree it should] [or like I believe it should][or
Back to the good human. In order to understand what a good human is, we must understand (1) the nature, teleologically, of a human and (2) how a human can behave so as to align themselves with it. There is a ton I could say here but to be brief, humans have rational capacities with a sufficiently free will (that can will in strict accordance to reasonto cognitionover conative dispositions); and this marks them out, traditionally, as persons. A personviz., a being which has a rational naturemust size up properly to what a rational nature is designed to do. Some of which are the intellectual virtues like the pursuit of truth, pursuit of knowledge, being open-minded, being intellectual curious, being impartial, being objective, etc. The one important right now, for your question about stealing, is Justice.
A good man is, ceteris paribus, a just man. Why? Because a good man properly utilizes his natural, rational faculties; and those rational faculties are designed to be impartial and objective; and, as such, are designed to bestow demerit and merit where it is deserved (objectively)not where it is wanted. This is the essence of fairness.
As a just man, one cannot disprespect the proper merit that is innate to other persons; for they are just like him: they have a proper will which is rational. Therefore, in order to properly and impartially respect a person, he must respectall else being equaltheir will just as much as his own; and he cannot validly place his own will, all else being equal, above theirs without it being a matter of bias.
Now we can answer your question: why is stealing wrong (objectively)? Because stealing is effectively the act of cheating a person out of what they deserve in order to acquire someone one doesnt deserve because they want it. This is to totally and utterly disrespect the other person qua person and to place ones desires above the impartial facts.
In this view, it is worth noticing that stealing is not wrong because of some Divine Law or Platonic Form but, rather, because a person is a person and as such has a rational nature which they must adhere to in order to be a good person; given that the objective goods to persons are relative to the teleology of being a person. This is why nosce te ipsum is so important: one cannot escape what they are. If they want to be good, then they have to be a good at what they arenot what they want to be.
I think history may have demonstrated that moral facts don't exist and societies can turn to killing people indiscriminately fairly quickly. Particularity those cultures run by those who think they own the truth.
Anyway - let's move on to the next part since we aren't going to agree on truth and facts.
And thanks again for engaging with such thorough responses.
In relation to your example about stealing Quoting Bob Ross
Agree. And I have already alluded to this approach myself that we can set a goal and reach this objectively, but the goal itself is subjective. This is how Sam Harris seems to arrive at wellbeing as a moral foundation.
Quoting Bob Ross
As you suggest this is a contested idea and I have no way of determining whether you are correct about this.
Quoting Bob Ross
I find this paragraph riddled with assumptions I am either skeptical about or cannot accept as true. I see no good reasons to endorse essentialist accounts of human behavior, so the notion of a teleological human nature is contentious and unsubstantiated.
I believe our use of reason is directed and shaped by affective responses, with reason often serving as a post hoc justification for emotional responses. I tend to hold that reason follows emotion, so what is often described as a 'rational nature' is better understood as rationalization rather than an innate rationality. I don't accept that the qualities you have listed here (pursuit of truth or knowledge or impartiality) are anything more than contingent factors shaped by culture and language, and I don't think we are likely to arrive at an agreement about what such values would look like in practice. I also think several levels of expertise would be needed to assess the contents of this paragraph in full.
I do thank you for clarifying where you are coming from and I respect the amount of thought and effort you have put into this. You seem to really crave certainty. I tend to be more appreciative of uncertainty. I suspect our dispositions are responsible for where we land.
I don't think it is worth us taking any more time on this (for now) since we do not share enough presuppositions to continue and we are bound to stick to our guns no matter what the other person says.
Ok.
Lets parse this argument. You are saying:
P1: If moral facts exist then societies could not turn to killing people indiscriminately.
P2: Societies have turned to killing people indiscriminately.
C: Therefore, moral facts do not exist.
This is obviously a non-sequiture. This is like saying:
P1: If mathematical facts exist then societies could not turn to killing people indiscriminately.
P2: Societies have turned to killing people indiscriminately.
C: Therefore, mathematical facts do not exist.
The issue is the same for both: there mere existence of a fact does not entail that humans will immediately believe it is true. In fact, this would be odd to say; e.g., like a mathematical fact wasnt a fact all along because we just demonstrated the proper proof for it (after lots of disputes), or like a mathematical fact should be believed to be true even though one doesnt have good reasons to believe it (given they are not given the hindsight, like we are, that it is a fact).
:yikes: . Sam Harris just blanketly asserts that wellbeing is objectively good: his approach to metaethics is to avoid it ..
What you are describing here and with Harris approach, which is really a form of moral anti-realism, is that subjects set out for themselves, cognitively or conatively, ends for themselves which are subjective (or non-objective to be exact); and somehow because of this there are no objective goodsjust hypothetical goods. Viz., a hypothetical good for basketball would be, under this view, something like if you want to be good at basketball, then you need to practice it or if we want to have fun, then lets invent a game called basketball; but, importantly, the examples I gave are NOT convertible to hypotheticals. Lebron is a good basketball player is not convertible to a hypothetical: it is a categorical statement which is normative, because it speaks of goodness which is about what ought to be. E.g., the good farmer is not hypothetically good at farming.
One must determine its truth based off of the reasons for accepting it. My argument was based off of the colloquial way we talk and behave about biology: we behave as if it is teleological. Are you suggesting, e.g., that when someone says My eye is malfunctioning that they are really saying something like My eye is not working like I wish it would?
What do you mean by essentialism?
Many times that is the case, but dont you agree that it is possible for a human to completely go against their nature qua animal in accordance with only reasons they have for it? This would negate your point, because it admits of humans having a nature such that they have rational capacities irregardless if they use them properly.
Whether or not to conclude our discussion, I will leave up to you my friend. However, neither of us are bound to stick to our guns no matter what the other person says. I am more than willing to change my mind if someone gives me good reasons to.
That's what people say, of course. But somehow no one ever provides good reasons, right? :razz:
Quoting Bob Ross
That would be a bad argument and I apologize for lazy wording. I was aiming for a quip. I guess my point was an observation not an argument. Why is it that no matter what the moral system or moral facts people are convinced of at any given time, the killing continues. Could it be that morality is chimerical?
Quoting Bob Ross
Well yes, as I say he has decided, not without precedent, that wellbeing should be the foundation of morality because harm to wellbeing appears to be a good indicator of what is bad.
Quoting Bob Ross
Not sure. How would we demonstrate when this happens?
Quoting Bob Ross
I take this to mean that there are essential characteristics of what it is to be human. For instance, that gender is unchanging that humans can be defined by traits like the ones you noted.
Quoting Bob Ross
I'm not sure I understand this argument very well. Might be me or the wording used. If you can keep it simpler and briefer it might assist.
I forget, are you borrowing from Aristotle's notion of teleology here? The purpose/functioning of a thing?
If basketball is about skill and winning, then Lebron is a good basketball player (I don't know who this is but I can make inferences)? You believe human life can be assessed similarly and has a telos? We can agree as to what constitutes good - based on teleological grounds, which you believe are objective?
Thats not true: there are many people on this forum that have changed my mind about things. In fact, I used to advocate for moral anti-realism on here: just look at my past discussion boards I created.
Thats a very complex, socio-pyschological question. I am not sure how deep we want to get into it. The first problem is that there are wildly different understandings of the moral facts out there; the second is that people tend to behave like a herdthey are not governed properly by reason. Most people just end up being regurgitations of their societies values unless they are the ones being persecuted.
Just as a side note, the problem with Harrisand why he is a laughing stock in the philosophy communityis not that he thinks well-being is the chief good: its that he doesnt give any actual arguments for why that is the case in the Moral Landscape. The parts where there is a semblance of an argument, are so poorly written. He gives no metaethical account of why goodness is objective, nor how well-being is objectively good. He just pulls it out of his butt.
The other problem is that he thinks ethics can be done purely through science; which makes as much sense as doing epistemology purely through science
We do it all the time; some people more than others. Heck, just do it yourself real quick: decide to do exactly the opposite of what you want to do. Viola!
The most extreme example I can think of is David Goggins, if youve ever heard of him.
Ok, sure. Theres an essence to being a human; but it can evolve over time. I dont think my view requires humans to be ever-unchanging to work.
Yes.
Viz., under a view that says the only goods are hypothetical to ones goals (e.g., if one wants to be healthy, then they shouldnt smoke) there are no expressions of good which are non-hypothetical (e.g., one shouldnt smoke); but the problem is that Lebron is a good basketball player, Bob is a good farmer, etc. are non-hypothetical expressions of goodness. It is on the person that takes this kind of view to explain how those kinds of expressions are reducible to hypotheticals.
Basketball is about winning in accordance with the rules of basketball: saying if here would just be an expression of ones uncertainty about it. For example, imagine I told you if math is about doing operations on numbers in such and such ways, then 2 + 2 = 4: does that make all mathematical propositions hypothetical? I dont think so. 2 + 2 = 4 is a valid, categorical statement; and me saying if math < > is just an expression of my uncertainty about what math is; and even if it werent, 2 + 2 = 4 is a valid categorical statement.
Essentially, yes. I outlined it before in a previous post. Teleology provides objective, internal goods (to itself).
"What must exist before any value at all is possible?"
The answer is: life.
Without life, there's no perception, no judgment, no meaning - nothing matters to nonexistence.
From that, you can define good simply:
Good is whatever supports, protects, and enhances life.
Its not about arbitrary rules, its about recognising that life itself is the root of all meaning.
From there, you can build personal values (truthfulness, creativity, compassion, strength) by asking:
"Does this help life flourish?"
It keeps things grounded, without needing faith or floating abstract rules.
You can find the formal paper HERE
But not women?
So if capital punishment is law in one country and proscribed in another, is it moral? How do we adjudicate between differences in laws pertaining the same matter? Homosexuality? Or are you saying morality is arbitrary and it hitches a ride with legislation?
This is not so with issues like sex before marriage and homosexuality, they seem fairly clearly to come down to cultural preferences. In another thread you claimed homosexuality is wrong, not just for you but per se, and you will probably claim that is a moral fact. And yet the majority today probably disagree with you. Facts are demonstrable, how are you going to demonstrate that homosexuality is objectively morally wrong?
Quoting Ludovico Lalli
Any constitution is a human made document that can and is altered over time as values change. Some constitutions omit human rights protections, for instance. How do we determine if the constitution represents the good? And how do we translate vague motherhood statements about equality into law?
Quoting Ludovico Lalli
The law is a reflection of the values of a society: the whole reason there is a significant world-wide enterprise of law reform is because society often identifies that our laws are behind current moral thinking and inadequate and unjust. This can include laws on child labour, environmental protection, and the rights of minority groups, laws about drugs, family law, privacy law, health law and corporate legislation. So, the notion that law equals morality seems incoherent and the reverse of how things work. The law is an attempt to codify a culture's moral principles and dominant moral values - it comes after we decide what's right.