That is a part of ethics, the other is: what is good?

The idea that I must act for the other's sake and not for my own is a largely Kantian idea, and it is problematic.

I guess it depends on what you are referring to by 'egoism' and 'altruism'; and, to me, in a marriage one is acting for one's own sake and another's sake--so there is an element of egoism there (albeit it not narcissism). Acting truly as if the two partners are one organism isn't how marriage usually works in practice. E.g., one does not divorce their partner to save the marriage, like one would chop off their arm to save their body: they don't do this precisely because marriage presupposes that each partner is trying to find the right balance between themselves and the other person. Obviously, divorcing to save a marriage makes no sense, but if it truly is just a matter of two people being fused into one person, then they should have no problem sacrificing one for the sake of the other in a dire situation.

My point is just that marriages are about finding the right balance between one's own needs and another person's, not some relationship where egoism has been completely overcome.

I think it might be best if I give a brief elaboration of this moral realist theory, and see what you disagree with. So far, it seems as though most of your critiques and points are irrelevant to the OP.

This theory posits that morality is objective—i.e., that there are states-of-affairs or arrangements of entities in reality that inform us of what is moral or immoral. It posits that what is good (viz., The Good, in the sense of an objective goodness) is flourishing—i.e., goodness is identical to flourishing. Flourishing is, at its core, the fulfillment of something relative to its purpose. Flourishing is contextual and objective: it is contextual insofar as one must posit a context in which one is assessing flourishing (e.g., I am flourishing, you are flourishing, we are flourishing, society is flourishing, etc.) and objective insofar as it is a mind-independently existing relation between a purpose and fulfillment thereof (viz., one’s psychology has nothing to do with flourishing being identical to the fulfillment of purposes). This relation, however, contains an element of subjectivity insofar as purposes are subjective (i.e., what it means for something [within a context] to fulfill its purpose is relative to the psychology of one or more subjects): this does not make flourishing itself subjective but, rather, merely that that very objective relation is that of (subjective) purposes being fulfilled. Each context one could posit, for evaluating flourishing, which is infinite in amount, is hierarchical in the sense that larger contexts have more flourishing and smaller contexts have less flourishing (in total); and, consequently, the larger the context of flourishing, the greater the good (i.e., the greater the flourishing). Thusly, the highest good is universal flourishing, because it has the greatest amount of flourishing being the largest context. The highest good has the most good and is, therefore, the best good: it is the ultimate good. Therefore, if one is committed to being good, then they should strive for this best good, this highest good, this universal flourishing, instead of a lower one.

With that being said, what do you disagree with in that theory?

I would like to also disclaim that this position is not “fake”, as you implied multiple times in your response: by noting that I have a separate thread for moral subjectivism, I was not meaning to imply I am a moral subjectivist. Personally, I hold this theory instead; but I am more than happy to discuss moral subjectivism, as I think it gets a very bad wrap by most people who, quite frankly, do not fully understand the theory.

Normativity is (pardon) bovine poo revisionism for objective morality. It's just another way of saying moral subjectivism has merit in and of itself.

I don’t think removing normativity from the good makes moral subjectivism itself have merit. Instead, it just fixes a lot of problems with moral realist theories which posit the contrary and makes more realism more plausible.

Another thing I would like to disclaim is that when I say flourishing has that subjective element of being the fulfillment of a (subjective) purpose: I am referring to the depths of the soul and not whimsical day-to-day opinions or desires a person has.

It doesn't matter what people believe because what is good is a law of the universe, objective.

So, this is not something posited in my theory; and I don’t see any evidence to support the good being a natural law.

Well yes, I follow your distinction here. But no, you are sidestepping a dangerously important issue. If you fail to realize that virtues ARE the quantum discrete parts of goodness, you fail (in general).

I didn’t follow any of this: what is a ‘quantum discrete part of goodness’? Virtues are habits of character that are good: they are not identical to goodness.

Well you did what the other guy did and did not put your part my part refers to that you are referring to here with your response. That makes it too hard to respond.

Correct. I am not going to quote everything you say, because there is too much. I only tag the portion relative to what I am responding to, and trust you will be able to navigate your own responses.

I said necessary. But yes, if it is necessary. It is not torture as that implies negative intent, negative wants.

It is immoral to torture someone (or torture them absent of this ‘negative intent’ you mentioned) for the sake of building their virtue.

Beauty and accuracy are objective.

What do you mean by accuracy? Accuracy of what?

I don’t think beauty necessarily instantiates objective moral truth. Being ugly has nothing to do with what is moral or immoral. There could be a reality with universal flourishing and every person therein is uglier than a bat.

If my goal is to kill Asians, then if I succeed I am flourishing. That is subjective morality

The first sentence is in principle correct, the second is not implied from the first. In the smallest, or one of the smallest, contexts of flourishing, of good, if one has the purpose of killing asians, then they would thereby flourish if they are sufficiently killing asians. However, the buck does not stop here: the highest good is universal flourishing, and killing asians clearly violates that. So, colloquially, my theory would state “it is immoral to kill asians for the sole sake of fulfilling one’s own desire”.

Nevertheless, flourishing is not subjective; so even in the example you gave, it does not follow that morality is subjective.

Objective morality says that killing people just because they are Asian is incoherent immoral nonsense.

No it does not. Objective morality (i.e., moral realism) is a three-pronged thesis:

1. Moral judgments are propositional (moral cognitivism).
2. Moral judgments express something objective (moral objectivism)
3. There is at least one true moral judgment.

Moral realism itself does not entail that moral anti-realism is internally incoherent, although a particular theory may advertise that, nor that it is nonsense; but, rather, just that it is objectively wrong to do so.

Now you just added another component, 'harmoniously'. You cant do that either

It is implied by the highest good: universal flourishing requires, nay presupposes, universal harmony.

Oh lordie! The mind-independent thing again. As shown later that is a rug and a bad one. nothing is mind-independent in the way you seem to suggest. We are all connected.

You cannot claim that moral is objective and turn around and deny that objectivity is ‘that which is mind-independent’.

I will stop here for now, so that we can hone in on our conversation to the OP.

Interesting. Well, that's just crazy. And it is of course born of subjectivist delusion, but I do not want to just throw a no without reason.
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I mean, come on, you're the one trying to defend subjective morality.

I am not arguing for moral subjectivism. This position (in my OP) is a form of moral realism.

That means if I believe the word flourish means killing babies with x traits on that basis alone is possibly moral or a principle of only 'my morality'.

Nope: we don’t define what flourishing is other than the word to semantically refer to it.

So, your postion is based on the rough equivalence of desire and morality.

Not at all. This moral realist theory posits that The Good is identical to flourishing, and The Good is analyzed within contexts; and the smaller the context the lower the Good, and the larger the context the higher the Good.

Hilarious. Myself and at least one other person here have pointed out that you are sweeping the second order issue under the rug. You just tied like 6 goals into that definition

Flourishing is just the fulfillment of something relative to its purpose. I don’t think this is all that controversial.

What “second order issue” are you referring to? Normativity?

The good is all virtues. So you could have a dimension for each virtue and then any choice must include n-level complexity (and it does). The word 'goals' is your rug that you are sweeping all of truth into as to hard to look at. Stay messy. Stay real.

The Good, in this view, is flourishing: it is not virtues. Virtues are habits of character that are good.

By ‘goal’, I just mean ‘purpose’; and I think I have been really open about that flourishing is sufficient fulfillment of something relative to its purpose. I don’t think I am sweeping it under the rug at all.

this statement taken at the meta level is telling and horrifying. Wear you hair shirt on your own time. This is said in humor.

I am not following.

Wisdom is only ever earned via suffering

One can be flourishing in insufferable conditions; and I never said that we can’t use suffering to flourish more (in the long term).

Also, wisdom is not The Good. This is a separate issue, but I am assuming you are also leveraging this critique against The Good as well.

Necessary suffering is wise to inflict upon people in order to facilitate them earning wisdom

I do not necessarily agree with this, if you are implying we should torture people to give them “more wisdom”.

You're the subjectivist. I will instead tolerate the many subjectivist errors towards wisdom because the intent to become wise seems present.

I think you have misunderstood the OP: this is not a thread about moral subjectivism. I have a separate thread for that metaethical theory if you would like to discuss that there. If you are accusing this theory of truly being a form of moral subjectivism, then I am not seeing yet why that is the case.

Does it not also include growth? What about accuracy? Is beauty a part of your flourish. It's so unclear really

Flourishing, being the fulfillment of something relative to its purpose, is not necessarily, in -itself, dependent on anything other than the purpose being fulfilled. That purpose can be anything. For most people, yes, personal growth is going to be a part of that. I am not sure to what extent beauty factors in for most people, and I am not sure what you mean by accuracy: accuracy of what?

You again included the goal. That is the meta second level of distinction that I was referring to.

The Good, as flourishing, is not dependent on a goal itself: it is the objective relation between a thing and its purpose such that it has been sufficiently fulfilled.

OK, so there is no way for us to be objective. We can only try to be objective.

That is irrelevant to what I said, which was that I deny that the Good is subjective. That our striving towards the good is subjective does not entail whatsoever that the good itself is subjective.

it is not the highest good.' What? Seriously? YOU can't say that. There is no good to you.

The highest Good is universal flourishing, which is the flourishing of everything harmonously (with one another). Again, I think you misunderstood the OP. Perhaps you were forwarded here from someone in the TFP that was asking you to analyze my other thread about moral subjectivism. This thread is about a moral realist position I have come up with.

You say 'factually wrong' and I am thinking you think facts are objectively correct.

A fact is a statement about reality that properly corresponds to it. Facts are objective insofar as their agreement with reality is mind-independent. When I say ‘factually wrong’, I mean that there is a state-of-affairs or arrangement of entities in reality in virtue of which make it true that it is wrong. This is objective, not subjective.

Due to experience, everything, even existence itself, is subjective

You are conflating experience being subjective with everything being subjective.

Lol, so again, you are back to declaring my argument, objective morality. I can't tell. Maybe you are a moral realist.

I would like to ask, and I mean this with all due respect: did you read the OP? I usually give people the benefit of the doubt, but I am now suspecting you may have jumped into this thread from someone else who notified you of my moral subjectivist metaethical theory that I defended in a different thread (or actually multiple threads). Am I right? If not, then I apologize. If so, then I would suggest reading the OP: it is a pretty quick read and you will probably understand better what this moral realist position is (and what it isn’t); and, that way, we can hone-in on our conversation to the OP itself.

You ARE a moral realist and you just don't realize it.

I am still confused at why you think that this theory (I have presented) is purporting to be a moral anti-realist position; let alone moral subjectivism.

Secondly, there is no such law of the universe that dictates that we have free will: it is a biproduct of our ability to cognize. — Bob Ross
(This is a) Wildly conceited and egoic point of view. We did this? Really? The same people that invented twinkies and cigarettes? I see (backs away slowly).

My claim (that you quoted) never attempted to say that we invented free will. It is a biproduct of our ability to cognize.

Free will is what causes physical reality to occur.

It seems as though, and correct me if I am wrong, you are think that there is a natural law of morality which actually forms things, like a force. I don’t see why that is the case.

I will say that I disagree with most of what you said about moral subjectivism, but this thread isn’t meant to debate that; so if you want to discuss that then shoot me a message on the moral subjectivism thread of mine.

To rationally believe X, I have to know what X means

This is perfectly compatible with agnostic atheism. An agnostic atheist knows what it means for god(s) not to exist, so they can “rationally” believe that god(s) don’t exist without knowing god(s) don’t exist.

To rationally believe X, I have to know X is a fact

This is equivalent to saying what I was saying before: according to you, to rationally believe X, one must know X (saying it is a fact is redundant). This is what you haven’t defended but, instead, diverted to the previous principle (quoted above this quote). I don’t think one needs to know X to believe X, which is not the same thing as needing to know what X means to believe X.

So a fairly basic way to overcome the egoist's objection is to recognize that there are common goods, the benefit of which is in our private interest. Think of the mother who nourishes her child and sees the good of her child as her own good; or the father who finds his own good in the good of his family, or the soldier who makes sacrifices for the good of his nation, which is his own good. A bright dividing line between "my good" and "others' good" does not exist in reality. People regularly (and without intellectual recognition) come to recognize others' good as their own good

This is a good way, indeed, to get people to generally care, to some extent, about others; but it does not overcome egoism: it merely explicates the incoherence of basic, standard egoism that the stereotypical narcissist is going adhere to. They don’t recognize that, actually, if they only care about their own flourishing then this entails they should, to some extent, care about others.

Truly overcoming egoism, in all its forms, requires the individual to transcend their own good and do things for the sole sake of the good of something which is not themselves. If one does something for someone else for their own sake, then they are not doing for that person’s sake.

However, the more I have thought about egoism, I would say that you are absolutely right that egoism and altruism blend together when properly understood; because being purely selfless is to just take advantage of oneself—to not see one’s own worth—and being purely selfish in a narcissistic way generally is incoherent. But being both egoistic and altruistic, in a balance, allows for optimal flourishing.






:up:

The Good is not normative. — Bob Ross

Agreed. That which may or may not be good, as in instances of, is.

I would say that the instances of good are also non-normative.

The metaphysical argument being, one cannot know (appreciate, consider, allow….whatever) a thing as good, without the quality itself being resident in consciousness somewhere, somehow, over and above mere experience. Same with beauty, justice, and so on.

I didn’t follow this part: can you please elaborate?

On the other hand, your triangle example doesn’t work the same as the ideal of The Good, in that it is impossible to think a triangle in general, for each though of one is immediately a particular instance of the conception. The Good, however, as an ideal, can never be constructed in accordance with a conception, hence remains a different kind of judgement.

I would say that The Good is not an ideal: is an conception; and, consequently, can be applied to every particular just like a triangle. The Good is identical to flourishing. An ideal that one could formulate from The Good is striving towards a reality with the highest form of Good, which is universal flourishing in a universally harmonious way.

A consequence of realizing that existence is calculated over time, is that optimally we want the most existence possible over time. The longer the time continues at X level, the better the long term existence.

Then, is it true that the time interval that should be used is the longest foreseeable future?

Constant and consistent rates of morality are the most valuable. Anytime there is no foreseeable limit to its end, this will always be a more valuable existence than a 'spike' of existence. Thus I could murder someone for a quick spike of existence, but then we would lose the constant rate of that person's life. This is almost always a net negative.

It seems like you are saying that the best action to take is the one that maximizes material and expressive existences in the longest foreseeable future, is that right?

Spikes of existence that don't negatively impact steady and constant sets of existence. Explained above with the murderer. But if I want to go have a party with friends, the existence spikes up and is a good thing.

I don’t understand this one. So if I go in my garage and do a whole bunch of useless nonsense but technically it produces expressive existences and I don’t harm anyone doing it, then that is better than if I had done one productive thing that produced less expressive existences?

What do you think about what I've written here. Don't think about humans yet! :) Does what I'm saying make sense from what we've built in a world without humans so far?

Assuming my responses here are accurate (to what you are conveying), then, yes, I think I understand and still think this is going to lead to all sorts of counter-intuitive conclusions; but I am waiting until we get to your analysis of a reality with life in it first (;

It sounds like you are holding straight up act-consequentialism, but I could be wrong.

Might be way late on this, but as noted in the other thread, practice! Hoping it makes per....sort of good. LOL.

Absolutely no worries! I appreciate your responses.

We know what a triangle is because its conditions are contained in its concept.

One only knows what is contained in a concept after abducing/inducing that very concept. Prior to learning what a triangle is, with your faculty of reason, you did not know anything about it; so it doesn’t help to know, generically, that a concept, by definition, contains the essence of its referent.

My point starting from the particulars to the universals, is methodological: our faculty of reason only obtains concepts fundamentally from abduction/induction and not deduction. Deduction comes in after we already have abduced/induced something.

We can't do that with 'good'. There is no a priori conception. It must be derived from particulars.. Imo

Firstly, when I am talking about abducing/inducing concepts, I am not talking about our faculty of understanding (i.e., our cognition responsible for producing our conscious experience) but, rather, our faculty of reason (i.e., our cognition responsible for self-reflectively analyzing our conscious experience). We do not come to know what a triangle is a priori with our faculty of reason; albeit our faculty of understanding already is familiar with it a priori. E.g., a newborn baby can immediately represent to themselves a triangle within their conscious experience but they cannot represent abstractly, over-and-above their conscious experience, what the concept of a triangle is: I am interested in the latter, for all intents and purposes.

For the first response, my clarification was more in the opposite direction. One must know what a President is in order to know that Bob will become one/it

Correct.

Y = a president is one elected to preside over an organized body of people, such as the chief executive of a republic.
X = bob is going to be the next president.

I must know Y in order to know X. @AmadeusD was arguing, in their OP, that agnostic atheism is nonsensical (or irrational) because an analysis of the two words conjoined (i.e., agnostic + atheism) reveals that anyone subscribing to it claims no knowledge of whether gods exist while not believing it; and this argument rests on the assumption, or perhaps defended principle, that one must know what they believe—i.e., they must know X to believe X.

I dont think one needs to know what a President is before being told Bob will become one/it to know that Bob will become one/it.

You are right insofar as one could know that Bob will become something, of which all one is aware of is that it is called ‘presidency’, and thusly one does not completely understand nor know what it means for Bob to become president (without knowing what presidency is).

I can tell you that this wooden block I have in my hand is floovy (in fact, I just did) and you will thereby know, without knowing what floovy means, that the wooden block has a property of something--but not what that property is itself.

This could also be pointless - but i need practice for my upcoming papers LOL

Best of luck, my friend!

My understanding is that the conflict in the above exchange is that you are asserting a temporality requirement to the knowledge that Bob will become President

No, it is that there is a temporal relationship between the knowledge used to believe “bob will become president” and that belief. I am not saying that one needs to know “bob will become president”.

I.e that one must know what a President is, in order to justify the knowledge that Bob will become one/It.

That is an example, not id est. That could be true, but it also could not (as you already rightly pointed out).

See this is the level we should currently be at in this conversation! Carefully looking at the base in which we're building something from. Let me clarify what I'm talking about here. We're talking at the abstract level.

I'm just noting how the math functions work. In algebra for example we can add or subtract as much as we want from both sides of the equation and X stays the same.

x = 1
x-1 = 1=1

The point I'm making is that when setting up a moral calculation, you can objectively set whatever time you want.

existence * 1 second
existence * 1 minute

That's all. I'm asking you whether taking the total existence and multiplying it by time is a good measure of calculating existence over that course of time

My question is about the next step after this. You are just noting that time factors into potential expressive and material existences, which is just basically a tautology (as potential implies time).

I am asking, when making the calculations, what time interval is used and why?


For now, that is all I have; as the rest of your response is about things you asked me not to indulge in yet (;

Not sure that's true. You can have direct knowledge that Bob will become President (for instance, if you're told he's going to be by a source trustworthy).

If by this you just mean that you were told “Bob will become president”, then this does not negate my point. One must know something—i.e., one must believe themselves justified in at least one of their beliefs—to believe that “Bob will become president”. That could be simply being told it.

I appreciate your elaborate response!

Unfortunately, it is so long that I am having a hard time knowing where to start (and end), so let me just respond to the key points (that I was able to decipher from your post). You let me know if there is anything in particular you would like to discuss (that I may have perhaps overlooked).

Firstly, you seem to be still thinking that The Good requires “a second-order inclusion of meaning” (presumably a standard) which I am overlooking. I say to this, that it does not have any such thing.

Secondly, you ask what ‘flourishing’ is? I would say that it is the ‘optimal or sufficient actualization of goals’. I use it very similarly to ‘happiness’, except that I think that ‘happiness’ has a certain connotation of ‘feeling pleasant’ that I wish to avoid. Flourishing is sufficient realization over time relative to a goal (or goals).

Thirdly, you seem to also worry, subsequently, that flourishing may be subjective, which I deny. To take your example, it is entirely possible that a society could be flourishing relative to their own goal of sacrificing babies (to whatever extent they want)—just like how a psychopath serial killer can be happy by torturing other people—but this is not the highest Good. The lowest Good, afterall, is, by my own concession, egoism and some intermediate level is a society which has set out goals which make them fulfilled (pyschologically) by sacrificing some babies, but the highest Good is the ultimate sight for the eyes of the moral, virtuous man. You seem to have forgotten that The Good, under this view, has levels. Flourishing, as I have defined it, is relative to goals/purposes; and from this one can abstract the highest form of The Good, which is everything flourishing [relative to their own goals]. Therefore, what that society is doing, in your example, is factually wrong (in light of the highest Good). This form of the Good, as the form or relation of flourishing, is not subjective: what it means for a particular person to flourish is relative to their own goals, but what it means to flourish (in general) is not; and flourishing of all, as the highest Good, does not waver with opinion. So you are partially correct in inferring that what it means to flourish is going to have that subjective element of being relative to a goal, but that itself, in form, is objective. I do not get to choose what it means to flourish, but what it means for me to flourish is.

Fourthly, you briefly asserted, without any real elaboration on any positive argument for it, a ‘brevity principle’: “As far as humanity can tell using all its resources to date that are widely known enough to be discussed, morality has to have been objective since at least the expected dawn of time.” I honestly did not understand why this would be the case nor why it is called the brevity principle.

Fifthly, I think you are misunderstanding, or perhaps we just disagree, on the implications of moral subjectivism; and, more importantly, the nature of desire. Just to briefly quote you:

What subjectvists do not understand is this short and simple: If morality were subjective all stability as 'good' is not something you can put forth or depend on. You have embraced pure chaos.

This is not true at all if moral subjectivism is true, nor is it true of the nature of desire. Desire—i.e., will—is subjective, but it is by-at-large very persistent, as opposed to whimsical: people are psychological motivated by the deepest depths of their psyche, which their ‘ego’ has no direct access to, and this evolves very slowly. People depend on their desires all the time and with quite impressive precision and for large lengths of time. The only kind of chaos that might occur due to moral subjectivism is people’s fundamental desires may not agree with other people’s.

Sixthly and finally, you claimed that objective morality provides free will equally to subjects; which is not true at all. Firstly, it is clear that all animals of the animal kingdom (including humans) have varying degrees of free will, Secondly, there is no such law of the universe that dictates that we have free will: it is a biproduct of our ability to cognize. Thirdly, if morality is objective, then it says nothing about what free will we may or may not have: it says what we should be doing or/and what is good to do.

Bob

Hi! I started a thread on Happiness and was redirected here to relate it to my assertion of objective morality. Sounds fun! Here I am! My second thread only.

Nice to meet you, Chet! I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Aw, sure it can. Ethics can be done from anywhere, at anytime, by anyone. (This is the) Protestant Reformation of your faith.

What I was meaning by this is that we cannot completely understand what is the right or wrong thing to do by pure contemplation from your armchair. Abstract reasoning is important, but it has to be supplemented with experience. Ethic is a science.

Nope. You're totally off the rails there. You cannot judge what is good without some standard. There is nothing here for a declared subjectivist to lock onto. You say x, Fred says Y, Rita likes z. Nope. You have made a useless category.

For you, what is the difference, the distinguishing factor, between the triangle analogy and The Good such that you would accept the former and reject the latter?

I think they are perfectly analogous, and The Good is just an abstraction of particular acts. The Good is not normative.

Then if you start to describe what is this good thing about any action/belief, a reasonable amount of people have to agree or it would just be chaos

I think people do generally agree. We see a basic triangle and say “yep, that’s a triangle”. Likewise, we see someone feeding a starving child and say “yep, that’s good”. Perhaps, to help convey my point, strip the general conception of The Good of the word ‘good’: let’s call it G instead. G is just the general conception of acts which promote flourishing, and is abduced from particular acts [which promote flourishing]. No different than how the general conception of a triangle, let’s call it T instead to remove semantics, is the general conception of a “three-sided shape”, and is abduced from its particulars (e.g., a right triangle [a right T], an obtuse triangle [an obtuse T], etc).

It’s when we try to get people to justify The Good where things get confused and diverse.

People from random parts of the world may have some glaring differences but the generally sense and came up with the same patterns and indeed can relate the goodness thing in one action to the same goodness thing in another. So not only does it have the pattern it has but it is also deemed GOOD, a second step you are ignoring.

The biggest mistake of most moral realist theories, or so I say, is trying to fuse what is good with what one ought to do: The Good is non-normative. You seem to be still holding they are fused. I do not claim that the Good, in-itself, determines what one ought to do nor supplies the individual, technically speaking, with any normative standard whatsoever. Any moral realist theory which attempts this fails.

So, in this theory, it is not claiming that The Good is relative to a normative standard: it is just the abstraction of particular acts which promote flourishing, conception G, and I semantically refer to it as ‘The Good’ because that is how most people at least implicitly use the term. I say “I am doing good” when I am flourishing. I say “she is doing good” when she is flourishing. I say “society is doing good” when society is flourishing. When we say “helping the sick is good” I think the underlying intuition most people are expressing is that the act promotes flourishing [of that person who is sick, by helping them heal] and this is why they call it good. It is when people try to get someone to fuse this with normativity that the person rightly retracts their statement because there is absolutely no valid means of doing so. The way reality is does not entail how it ought to be. Seeing someone help the sick, albeit it good, does not itself obligate me to help the sick. The Good has been defamed of her name for the sake of incessant attempts at the synthesis of normativity with it.

The complexity of your categories in these good/bad judgments requires a second meta level of pattern matching not possible without some n-dimensional similarity and that is exactly what you are trying to refute.

Not if The Good is non-normative.

You seem to be proffering something akin to virtue ethics.

Yes, but I would say my OP doesn’t really support that; but I do support it.

It seems to me that he is simply defending his definition of 'good' by recourse to use. Ross is saying that acts which promote flourishing are good because that is what 'good' means, and we know what 'good' means by looking at the way the word is used. If you think the word means something else, then you should say what you think it means.

Exactly.

is correct in saying that the good has to do with flourishing, and flourishing bears on motivation, then of course we must be motivated to seek the good.

That’s true. Yes, we do seek flourishing. However, I would say, by default, we are only motivated (usually) towards the lowest Good, which is egoism (i.e., my flourishing). I am not sure that we are, by default, motivated towards the highest Good, which is universal flourishing. Only after grasping the good, intellectually (to some extent), do we acquire motivation towards the highest Good.

how do I non-temporally acquire knowledge of X and then a belief in X without that inevitably being a temporal process? — Bob Ross

I didn't say this. I gave an example of a kind of belief that can turn out to be irrational or rational on some temporal dependency.

You definitely said this:

The relationship is not temporal but one of dependency. If we're rational, belief depends on knowledge.

Underline adds by me. And, not to mention, you reiterated it again in your last response:

Those are both examples of atemporal logical/semantic dependency of raitonal belief on knowledge that beliefs possessing temporal dependency also have.

Why is it necessary for one of those two statements of mine to imply the other?
Of course the former doesn't imply the latter. The latter is a much simpler claim about rational beliefs than what the former says about rational beliefs that have some temporal dependency. They are not in contradiction, either.
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To have a belief about presidents, you need to know what "presidents" means.
To have a belief about who will become president in the future, I have to know what "becoming president in the future" means.

Again, my point is that you are now conflating a belief in X requiring knowledge of X with belief in X requiring background knowledge, Y. Agnostic atheism is perfectly compatible with the latter, not the former. An agnostic atheist claims that they belief X but do not know X; but that they have reasons to back (i.e., some knowledge about) Y such that they think they are justified in that belief [in X]. Your OP was attacking agnostic atheist in the sense that one needs knowledge of X to believe X; but you are no longer claiming this, and this renders your argument against the etymological schema ineffective.

To have a belief about presidents, you need to know what "presidents" means.
To have a belief about who will become president in the future, I have to know what "becoming president in the future" means.
Those are both examples of atemporal logical/semantic dependency of raitonal belief on knowledge that beliefs possessing temporal dependency also have.

I don’t see how any of that is atemporal. In order to know what “becoming president in the future” means to believe Bob is going to be the next president, I need to know the former before the latter.

That's very fair, and honestly where I thought the questioning would go first. The material existence is an atomic existence which is the combination of all possible expressions it can manifest when met with another material existence. An expression is the manifestation of a material existence in a unique way based on its situation and difference with another state. This state could be itself (Perhaps a singular existence has a bit of a warp or vibration to it over time) or what we can actually observe, its relation to another material existence.

So, let me make sure I am understanding: ‘material existence’ is really just ‘fundamental entities’. As an entity could exist ‘materially’ (in your sense of the term) but not materially (in the standard sense of being tangible), correct? E.g., a wave could exist ‘materially’.

My point in bringing it up was that you seem to imply that existence was a separate category altogether from material existence, but I think, if I am understanding correctly, it is just a broader type: a generic type.

To see if its unintuitive, why don't you create an example that you're thinking of try to calculate it out. The problem is you're trying to intuit some complex math. You can't. Its well documented that we suck at it as human beings

I think you are trying to inadvertently drown me in calculations, when it is perfectly reasonable to infer the calculations generally from the example. Philosophim, no one can count the exact atoms in a mountain vs. a baby.

But really, remove ALL ideas of intelligence and especially human morality now, because you have to learn the base calculations first.

I am using these examples to demonstrate the consequences of taking on an atom-to-atom comparison, or potential for potential, etc.

It loses it’s moral meaningfulness and potency if we are talking about a mountain vs. a rock.

However, I am more than happy to drop the analogies for now.

But for now, I'll answer this one in a way where you can see yes, sometimes saving the robot would be better.

The only thing I will say about this is that you are admitting the theory is counter-intuitive. This doesn’t mean it is wrong, just that virtually no one is going to agree that you should save a robot over a (human) baby. People generally hold life to be more sacred than non-life. Anyways, I digress.

Humanity is facing a crisis that cannot be solved with human minds alone. In 51 years, humanity will be wiped out if it isn't solved. So they created a robot that has spent the last 50 years calculating a solution to their problem. It has done it! With this it will save humanity. Unfortunately the building its in is on fire, and wouldn't you know it, someone left their baby there too. You have just enough time to save either the robot or the baby. The moral choice is clear. By saving the robot, you save humanity. By saving the baby, you doom humanity. Saving the robot results in more overall existence.

Philosophim, you’ve twisted the example in your favor! (: I was talking about all else being equal. If we are factoring in, like you said, (1) the quantity of material existences, (2) the quantity of expressive existences, and (3) the total net potential for both; then a highly complex robot (like terminator) is factually morally better, and thusly preserved over, a 2 month-old (human) baby. No extra factors: all else being equal.

Do you disagree with this as a function of measurement?

I believe you stated before that we use whatever time frame we want: I disagree with that. If you aren’t saying that, then what time frame, in your calculations (for whatever it is you are contemplating), are you using? You can’t seem to give a definite answer to that. This is not contingent on analyzing the moral worth of life.

1. Assume we have an objective morality, and it is a fact that a particular hurricane is worth more than a babies' life.
2. We're put in a situation in which we can't just save the child, but the child must die.
3.We have a magic gun that can stop the hurricane in its tracks. But doing so will cause horrible things to happen.
4. I want to save the baby despite all of this.

Does my want make it moral to save the baby? Of course not.

Correct. My point is you just bit a bullet. No one is going to agree with you that we should preserve a hurricane over saving someone’s life; let alone that we should preserve a hurricane at all. You are just biting the bullet and saying, “well, if it is a moral fact that I ought preserve a hurricane [that will destroy even just one person along with much, much non-life], then I ought to do it”.

it would be wrong to end the hurricane to save the baby. This isn't unintuitive either. We send people all the time to die in wars to preserve entire countries

The difference is that hurricanes are always bad, and there is no reasonably foreseeable consequence that would make keeping a hurricane good. Likewise, stopping a hurricane to save 2 people seems good, and preserving the hurricane that will kill those 2 people seems bad. You are saying that in the case that the hurricane has significantly more material and expressive existence, as well as more potential for both, than the two people; then, all else being, equal, the hurricane should be preserved.

So acts which promote flourishing are good because we have historically used the word "good" to describe acts which promote flourishing? This seems to be a kind of constructivism: moral facts are established by the conventions of our language use.

Unfortunately, I am unfamiliar with constructivism; but, semantically, yes: I am saying that we refer to this conception, G, as the word ‘good’ because that’s what people by-at-large mean by it when they use it. I think this is a standard convention of semantics: try to use the term how most people have historically used it.

I think that you're on the right track, but I think that this is a form of anti-realism, not realism.

Semantics is always subjective; so when I say we should assign G the word “good” in english, I am merely talking about subjectively what word we use to refer to G. G itself is not subjective, which is the general conception of acts which promote flourishing: just like how the conception of a “3-sided shape of which its interior angles add up to 180 degrees” is not subjective, but using the word “triangle” to refer to it is.

Though this is an interesting take if we consider other languages.

I am not familiar enough with arabic to analyze what the best word is to use when translating the english word “good”. All I am arguing is that we refer to it as “good” in english, and that’s all I need for my semantic argument to work. It is entirely possible that “good” does not translate from english to a specified language adequately: this happens all the time.

So, as I asked before, how do we determine whether or not something which is claimed to be moral really is moral?

Whether or not it can be classified under the conception of The Good. Again, you are asking: “how do we determine whether or not something which is claimed to be a triangle really is a triangle?”. Well, we have abduced the general conception of a triangle, and if the given shape can be classified meaningfully under that conception, then it is a triangle. No different with The Good.

If we can't do that then we can't look to the things that are claimed to be moral to determine what "moral" means, as we may be looking at things that aren't moral.

When assessing whether a particular shape is a triangle, we can absolutely misinterpet it as a circle; but this does not take away from the fact that, by-at-large, we have made progress towards what are triangles and what aren’t; and that most people can tell the basic difference between the two. Same with The Good.

I think most people can tell the difference between feeding starving children (as good) and torturing babies for fun (as bad); just like they can see a standard triangle and distinguish it from a standard circle. Yes, some shapes are weird: it is entirely possible I could present them with a triangle/circle hybrid that a normal person won’t know exactly which shape it is, just like I can bring up controversial moral claims, but this doesn’t take away from the general distinction between the two.

Just FYI, I edited this post. Not sure when you read it.

No. I'm talking about a system with the greatest existence, material, expressed, and potential would be considered the more moral reality.

I apologize, I must have misunderstood you then.

What is the difference between ‘existence’ and ‘material’: I thought the latter was a sub-type of the former. Same with expressed vs. existence.

Now compare to the four atoms that can potentially combine into molecules. Disregarding what is equal to the five molecules, we have 1 formation into a 2 atom molecule, and each individual atom bumping into that molecule and each other. 3*2*1 = 6. Multiply this four times as each atom can combine into a molecule, so 24. We can have the potential of two molecules forming out of the four, so 2 existence molecules, and one potential bump between them * four atom combinations = 12

This is still counter-intuitive: it is entirely possible that the maximal expressed and material existences is entities which are not alive. For example, it is entirely possible that when forced to choose between saving a robot and a baby, you will have to save the robot (because the material and expressed existences is higher in the former over the latter). This formula just results in biting a lot of bullets.

Likewise, so far you seem to be saying we can just make up a time frame to use for their comparisons, but then it becomes utterly arbitrary. For example, when choosing whether to save an adult sheep or a premature (human) fetus, if you are just talking about expressed and material existences that they currently have, then you have to save the sheep but if you consider a time frame of adult hood, then the premature (human) fetus is the choice. If you just say “you guys get to choose which time frame to use”, then this theory doesn’t really help anyone figure out what is moral (at best) or gives them a free get out of jail card to justify immoral acts (at worst).

Likewise, if you consider potential expressed and material existences, then this also has weird consequences; e.g., a hurricane may end up, if it runs its full course, producing much more expressed and material existences than a newborn baby--but obviously everyone is going to say that we should stop hurricanes and preserve the rights of babies. Yours would choose to preserver the hurricane over the baby (if in conflict).

No, the very fact that you revise your ideas and write long posts is evidence that you are not approaching these topics glibly.

Oh, I see. I was just confused at what you were trying to convey to me. I agree that many people on these forums put very little effort into their positions: they seem to be more interested in argumentation.

Okay, so you think goodness is act-centric, but you are thinking beyond human acts.

Correct.

Then I don't know what your criteria for atemporality is or how you're reaching any conclusion about what is temporal and what isn't.

Atemporality is the property of being timeless—having no temporal order. You were saying that the belief in X is atemporally dependent on knowledge of X. This makes no sense: how do I non-temporally acquire knowledge of X and then a belief in X without that inevitably being a temporal process?

Exactly, so you could believe that the next president will be Bob without knowing it: — Bob Ross

No, I can have an irrational belief that turns out to be incorrect, based on fallacy or just lack of knoweldge, or I can have a rational belief that turns out to be correct based on knowledge.

That’s not what you implied thought with:

I have to know what the president of the United States is in order to have a belief about who will become president in the future.

This implies that one only needs some knowledge which is not the thing about to be beleived for that belief to be rational (i.e., one needs knowledge of some Y for belief in X to be rational, not knowledge of X). If this is true, then you could believe that the next president will be Bob, given the knowledge you have, without knowing it will be Bob.

You seem to be saying that we learn what it means to be good by looking at what all good things have in common? But how do we determine that something is good in the first place?

The determination of what ‘goodness’ is is the process of abducing it from particulars. You are essentially asking “we can determine the concept of a triangle from particular triangles, but how do we know, first and foremost, what a triangle is?”: well, the former is what determines the latter.

Now, if it helps, replace the words with variables. Instead of ‘triangle’ we say T, and G instead of ‘good’. We can say that, no matter what we end up semantically calling T, T is the general conception of which each particular T<i> is subsumable under; and that we can infer T from a set of particular Ts (viz., I see this T<0> [e.g., isosceles triangle], T<1> [e.g., right triangle, etc. and infer T [i.e., the conception of a triangle]). We could debate semantically whether or not we want to label T ‘triangle’ or not, which is a separate question, but it does not take away from the fact that this T is a general abstraction of its particulars and that it is mind-independent. Likewise, we can debate whether or not semantically we want to call G ‘good’, but this does not take away from it being an abstraction of acts which promote ‘flourishing’. You may be caught up on the semantics, perhaps?

You say helping the sick is good. I say helping the sick isn't good. Where do we go from there?

Either we are disagreeing (1) semantically or (2) in the classification (i.e., the process of classifying the act as ‘good’, ‘bad’, or ‘neutral’).

In the case of #1, you would be disagreeing that the word ‘good’ should be used to refer to ‘acts which promote flourishing’; and, to that, my response is, briefly, that I think this is historically how the word tends to be used. We say ‘I am doing good’ when our bodies are healthy (i.e., our body parts are acting in harmony and unity to accomplish survival and thriving) and our goals are being fulfilled; and, most universally, we say ‘everything is going good’ when everyone is acting in harmony such that each person is respected and sufficiently sovereign. Likewise, when we say society is ‘doing good’, we usually mean that each part of the society is acting in harmony and unity to achieve the safety and sufficient sovereignty of its citizens. You see the pattern.

In the case of #2, you may be agreeing that the word ‘good’ should be used to refer to ‘acts which promote flourishing’, but not that helping the sick does promote flourishing. It is also possible that you may agree it promote flourishing all else being equal but that in a particular example it may not promote it at a universal level/context. Either way, this is a dispute about which category we should classify ‘helping the sick’. To this, I say that it seems pretty obvious to me that acts which promote the help of those who’s bodies are currently in disarray, disunity, and disharmony likewise promotes a world with more flourishing (unless perhaps we are enslaving people to do it or something).

Surely being a triangle is a mind-independent state of affairs? Some object either is or isn't a three-sided shape, regardless of what we believe or say. But in your OP you say that being good isn't a mind-independent state of affairs?

I am saying that the conception of a triangle is mind-independent insofar as it is a general abstraction of a set of particulars; but that it is mind-dependent insofar as conception are produced by minds (i.e., the process of determining and constructing a conception is mind-dependent).

I think we are both missing each others points, so let me slow down and ask one question: are you not saying that, in principle, the entity with more atoms is (morally) prioritized higher over one with less?

In large part, yes. The difficulty is that when we get to fundamental words and concepts they become more difficult to understand. "Being" is the grand-daddy example. Understanding what such words mean requires a highly competent philosopher, and I'm afraid Moore and Wittgenstein are far from that. Point being: these are difficult questions which must be approached with a large dose of humility. The fact that so many on TPF approach them arrogantly explains why their answers are so confused and superficial.

I am not following what your point is here? Are you implying that I am being arrogant in my definition of the good?

Now the first difficulty to note with the notion of goodness is that it is neither act-centric nor human-centric. There can be good acts and good humans, but there can also be good dogs, and good bridges, and good airplanes, and good sunshine. So we must first avoid the conflation of 'good' with 'moral' or even 'prudent'/'skillful'.

I think it is act-centric: a good airplane/bridge is an airplane/bridge whereof its parts act in harmony and unity to perform its function.

I don’t think a sunshine is itself good or bad; but, if it were, then I would imagine it is good if it is performing its function correctly.

Likewise, the universal, or highest good, is when everything in reality is acting in harmony and unity to flourish; so that could make something bad, in a universalized context, but still functionally good.

Is helping the sick good just because we use the word “good” to describe things like helping the sick? Or is helping the sick good because it satisfies the criteria of “being good”?

It is because it “satisfies the criteria ...”; but we only gain knowledge of that criteria by abducing it from the particulars.

I don’t immediately know what the concept of a triangle is, but particular triangles are triangles because they meet the criteria of that concept of a triangle. I gain knowledge of the concept of a triangle by abstraction of particular triangles.

By dependency, I mean logical dependency

This sort of “logical dependency” you described is not atemporal.

I have to know what the president of the United States is in order to have a belief about who will become president in the future.

Exactly, so you could believe that the next president will be Bob without knowing it: that’s exactly how agnostic atheism works.

You have now conflated the knowledge used to formulate the belief in X with the need for knowledge of X to formulate the belief in X.

This view is that the good is an abstraction of similar acts such that it turns out to the be equivalent to essentially 'flourishing'. Just like how we can infer the general conception of a triangle from particular triangles, we can infer the general conception of the good from particular examples (e.g., helping the sick, being kind, respectful, truthful, etc.). This conception is objective just as much as the conception of a triangle.

You just seem to be noting I can do all of them, but I want to know, in your formula, are you determine the right thing to be based off of a span of 1 year, 1 minute, most forseeable future, etc.? — Bob Ross

Ok, this would be human morality. We'll get there soon.

It isn’t, though: I am talking about the formula used for non-life and life here.

But why do you see it as wrong?

You have not given a clear analysis of what the property of goodness is (i.e., what is good?) nor why it is objective.

It seems to have to do with ‘rational agents agreeing on’ (i.e., your use of ‘objectivity’--which I deny) the good being ‘there should be existence, and more of it’ because you find it internally incoherent to posit the contrary.

Life is a high concentration of existence and considered more moral in comparison to an equivalent number of atoms in a rock.
…
Now in a case in which the rock would be destroyed or the one cell would live, in this comparison alone the life would be considered more moral and should continue to exist over the rock

An atom-to-atom comparison is not going to land you with life > non-life. E.g., a 1,000,000 ton rock has more atoms than a single-cell life and a (human) baby—so your conclusion would then be, when in conflict, to preserve the rock over the baby.

Something I've been noting is you seem to be using morality as a means of comparative elimination.

I am using comparisons and counter-factual examples to demonstrate how the conclusions of this theory are severely morally counter-intuitive.

Does this mean all single cell life should become multicellular? No. Just like the possibility of atoms forming into molecules doesn't mean all atoms should form into molecules

Why not? You seem to be saying it is objectively right/good for more identifiable entities to exist, and ‘upgrading’ from a single-cell to multi-cell seems better relative to that.

If the reason is that life needs non-life and thusly having only life overall lowers the amount of existent entities (because everything would perish into a blob or something), then it is unclear what formula you are actually using. It seems like you are using an act-consequentialist formula where you are trying to maximize the number of existent entities.

Likewise, it doesn’t make sense to say you are maximizing existence when you also believe that that matter is all that exists and cannot be created or destroyed: that entails existence itself is always equal—rather, what it exists as changes.

Wolves serve as a check to ensure too many sheep do not form, eat all the grass and plants in an area, and result in a mass extinction event.

But if you are just doing an atom-for-atom comparison, it may turn out that a big sheep may need to be preserved over a small, feeble wolf. Likewise, if you are considering how to maximize how many existent entities are there, then you would have to do more than an atom-to-atom comparison and consider the foreseeable consequences of keeping the sheep vs. the wolf and pick the one that seems to maximize your goal here. I am just unsure what exactly you are going for here.

An abstraction of similar acts.

The relationship is not temporal but one of dependency. If we're rational, belief depends on knowledge.

This doesn’t make sense to me. You seem to be saying that we must have knowledge of X before we can believe X; but then you say it is atemporal: can you give an example?

Beliefs that we formulate without knowledge are usually predictions or estimations

Isn’t this a temporal dependency?

This also seems like you are saying that we just need to have knowledge of Y (as opposed to X) to believe X, which is compatible with the etymological schema.

Ah good. I had hesitated to use that word as I wasn't sure it fit.

You view basically just mandates that the best state of reality is one with the most identifiable parts and relation of parts (or, in other words, most identifiable entities and relation of those entities); and this just seems to entail that everything capable of making decisions should be trying to get to that best possible world.

While the smallest time tick would be the most accurate, it may be impractical to do so.

But what are you calculating, the best way to achieve that best possible world?

If I am getting a salary of X, then I can:

1. Calculate total gross;
2. Calculate total net;
3. After essential expenses; etc

You just seem to be noting I can do all of them, but I want to know, in your formula, are you determine the right thing to be based off of a span of 1 year, 1 minute, most forseeable future, etc.?

Based on, 'Existence should be," do you have something in our approach so far that doesn't seem moral.

Not really. I think when an ethical theory leads to conclusions which violate every single moral intuition known to man (including the painfully obvious ones), then there is probably something wrong with the theory. E.g., someone tells me it is right to commit mass genocide, and I am inclined to think they blundered somewhere in their reasoning, but technically, in principle, they might be right depending on their argument (even though I don't like it).

I would say, in this case, you have just setup a moral framework where the most entities existing is best and your conclusions aren’t that particularly off; it is the idea that this is objective that is wrong, but I have been granting it for the sake of seeing where this goes. Likewise, it could be objectively right and I still would never promote this theory assuming my inferences about actions is accurate, because it will produce a world which I don't think anyone is going to want to live in (:

Let’s just move on to people’s interactions and see how well or poorly your thinking holds up; and perhaps I have just misunderstood.

My goal is to just shed some light on the opposing schematic approach which you have denied any legitimacy too; although I do not myself use it.

For the sake of brevity, I will refer to your schematic approach as a variant of the ‘traditional’ schematics and the other as a variant of the ‘etymological’ schematics. I label yours (as a variant of the) traditional (approach) because it is primarily the widely accepted view traditionally in the actual theological literature; whereas I label the other (a variant of the) etymological (approach) because it is a relatively new development, mainly derived by common folk, by reading the etymology, as opposed to the literature, behind the terms.

The crux of your specific argument for the traditional approach is that belief and knowledge are related such that the latter entails the former (e.g., “I know X” → “I believe X”, etc.) due to, as you say, rationality (because, according to your argument, it is only rational to believe X iff one knows X).

The etymological schema is going to completely deny this and, on the contrary, is going to claim that one can believe X, even rationally, without knowing X.

I think the best way to defend this schema, in this case, is to note some problems with your own formulation of the traditional schema first: you have the relation backwards between beliefs and knowledge. Knowledge, traditionally, is a true, justified, belief. A belief is not determined after one recognizes they have knowledge; but, on the contrary, they believe and then, if it turns out to be true and justified, then it is reaches the status of knowledge. When you say things like “If you believe something and you're rational, it's because you know something.”, this reverses the relationship such that one has to know X before they believe X (or perhaps simultaneously, which is seems pretty implausible) which is impossible (given the standard epistemology in the literature).

The etymological schema is going to say that we formulate beliefs, which are not yet knowledge, all the time (e.g., I believe that the tree I walked passed 3 days ago is still there even though I have little justificatory support for it, etc.); and they usually argue that it is not knowledge because it has not met the threshold of necessary justification to count as knowledge—like the court of law, where we could have a belief that someone did X, and even have some relatively good reasons to support that claim, but it nevertheless falls short in court.

If this is the case (that one can have beliefs about something while not knowing it), then there is a meaningful difference between those who claim to only believe something and those who believe it and know. This is not adequately represented, or so the argument goes, in the traditional schema: agnosticism is both the lack of belief and lack of knowledge, not just the former.

So, this would mean, if it is true, that ‘agnostic theism’ is the view that one believes at least one god exists, but doesn’t claim to know it. Likewise, an ‘agnostic atheist’ is the view that one does not believe in any gods but doesn’t claim to know it.

Now, if we properly re-reverse the relation between belief and knowledge in your view we can still salvage a defense of the traditional schema as well (just on different grounds): one could just say that, within academic and serious dialogue, people should only care about those beliefs which have (or at least purport to have) sufficient justification for them being true (and thusly having knowledge)--for, otherwise, one is discussing trivially held beliefs.

However, depending on how steep the threshold is for justification (for knowledge), which makes it less and less trivial, it may turn out meaningful in a colloquial conversation to ask if the person thinks they have justification to meet that threshold or if they just think they have good reasons to believe it. For example, if a person is thinking epistemically like they do scientifically, then they may mean by ‘knowledge’ some relatively high standard (like that of a scientific theory) when they say ‘I don’t know’ and they may still have pretty good reasons to believe it when they say “but I believe it” (like a pretty rigorously tested hypothesis, but not quite a theory yet in science).

Hopefully this helps.

Agreed. I never meant to the contrary. My original post was supporting methodological naturalism, not physicalism.

If your point is that people with views which do not impede some areas of their naturalistic investigations can still contribute to our knowledge even if those views cannot, then I totally agree.

If I am understanding correctly, then it sounds like you are just calculating total net 'identities' in reality over time, where preferably it is calculable closest to the last point in time. This doesn't seem moral to me and there are plenty of examples where this is just morally counter-intuitive and immoral. Likewise, is going to be plagued with bullets needing to be bitten.

Let's move on to human interaction and see where this goes.

Sorry for the delay Bob. I had to take a break from the forum for a few days to handle other things, but I'm back.

Absolutely no worries!

1. Existence is the smallest bit of identifiable material possible.

I don’t think ‘existence’ is quite the word you are looking for (unless I am just misunderstanding), as the term refers to anything that ‘is’. #1 here refurbishes the term to only refer to the most fundamental and primitive entities.

Anyways, I see what you are conveying here: your approach starts with the most fundamental ‘building blocks’ which, for you, are ‘fundamental “particles”’ (where ‘particle’ is symbolic and not necessarily something tangible).

1. In most cases, having more potential expressions of existence allows a greater existence to ultimately be expressed.

For the sake of brevity, I am going to refer to your fundamental principle that ‘existing is better than not existing’ as EB, and the derivate principle ‘the more potential expressions of existent entities the better’ as PEB.

With respect to PEB, what are you grounding/anchoring the span of potential expressions for comparison between ‘candidates’? (E.g., are you calculating it in terms of total net relative to the ultimate outcome? Are you calculating it in terms of the immediately foreseeable outcome? Are you anchoring it in the present or future?)

For example, when you determine something has X potential in terms of the expressions of existence, is that X potential calculated in terms of every single foreseeable expression it could produce during its lifetime? Or is it grounded in the present—i.e., X potential is calculated in terms of what the entity is producing in the present moment and not what one could anticipate it producing in the distant future. If the former, then how plausible does the inference need to be (in terms of how much potential it has) in order to be considered valid in your view?

I also noticed that you said “in most cases” and not “in every case”: so, is PEB just a general principle as opposed to an absolute one?

2. Where possible, the elimination of one existence's actual and potential existence should be avoided.

I get what you are saying; but this doesn’t seem moral to me at all. This will absolutely lead to biting a ton of bullets in ethics; and same with PEB (and EB).

I will stop here for now,
Bob

I don't really have a problem with noting the essences of things, as I view it as a useful abstraction of entities in reality for the sole sake of analysis.

I see the good as simply acts which promote sovereignty, unity, and harmony; and I acquire this by induction or perhaps abduction of acts themselves. So, sure, it is the essence of 'the good'.

I suppose what i'm pointing out here, is that each set of 'categorised acts' for want of a better term, would be peculiar to each person. There is no 'shared' Good or Bad ..Which lands me at 8billion individual 'moralities'. I'm unsure this is workable? But I could be missing a trick, as usual.

Not quite. Let’s tackle this by analogy: imagine I gave you a box full of circles and triangles and asked you to separate them by shape. Now, to your point here, let’s say you have not clue what a circle or a triangle is: this would, then, be a lot tougher task than if you already knew your shapes. Ok, so you try to reverse engineer which shape is which from the box without any help from anyone else. Let’s say you get it all wrong: does this take away from the fact that there is a right answer here? No. Does it produce a second set of categories which are valid (given the prompt I gave you—i.e., to separate them by shape)? No.

All you are noting here is that people may get confused, since they have not been trained since a young age to separate the good from the bad (unlike shapes, which we learn quickly); but every mistake does not constitute a new valid distinction between the good and the bad. There’s only one distinction which is valid.

I understand the categories are non-normative, but I still cannot see any gap between what is good, and how one should act. If an act is objectively a Good act, I understand this doesn't mean "one should be Good" but I can't understand how it doesn't imply this, without much wiggle room

I think the big mistake with traditional moral realist theories is that they try to make the normative judgments themselves factual—which is clearly false. There is nothing out there which dictates “one ought ...”; instead, a much more reasonable moral realist approach would be to equate normative judgments with our ability to choose and let the moral facts be the categories of the good and bad.

I just don't see how. Per the psychopath example above. Perhaps i get the concept, but reject that it's workable?

What do you mean by “workable”?

Fair enough. But that does seem to be picking an arbitrary set of conditions to relate metaethical categories to.

Historically, it seems like humanities efforts at ‘the good’ converges at promoting harmony, sovereignty, and unity. Semantically, I think this is what “the good” is implying. Of course, there are other uses of the term that are not moral, like ‘good’ in the sense of being optimal at its function (utility).

Ok. That's fair. I don't understand why you would want moral facts, if they don't inform normative expressions.

Because I see the good, and I want to do good. I am not just, in this theory, projecting my own psychology onto others: I am striving towards the good.

I would say the most compelling reason to be a physicalist is methodological and not ontological. We simply have only one valid methodological approach: naturalism.

Every advancement we have made into the truth has been empirical, even if it be done from an armchair, and never by educated guesses that are not grounded in empirical evidence. Likewise, it seems, historically speaking, that we assume something we don't understand is supernatural and then learn later it is perfectly natural--which I think counts in favor of methodological naturalism.