But the creative process needs a conclusion. — javi2541997

No, it does not. Where did you get that? Leonardo da Vinci, one of the most prolific creators of all times, had been criticised by Michelangelo for not completing his works.

Why I am not deserve to see your works? Am I worse than you?
Who are we to judge the world doesn't deserve our works and art? — javi2541997

Ayyayyayy. You can't place a guilt trip on an artist who is placing a guilt trip on you.

In other words, please allow people their individuality, and individual judgment without judging them.

Or you can judge them, too, but unless you appeal to a higher authority, your judgment on them will be as impotent as their judgment on you. Except you still won't enjoy their art, which makes the match 0:1 on their favour.

We are lucky this amazing writer never destroyed his works! — javi2541997

He had fully intended to.

But I still see it as a waste of time. What is the clue of writing a poem if I will burn it down? I would understand it if you vanish the works because you don't like them. — javi2541997

Waste of time? No. The creative process is fun, and at times therapeutical.

Why destroy the works if they are great?
1. The world is not deserving of them.
2. I (the artist) have had my fun, and I'm selfish in not sharing the joy of admiring my pictures / words.
3. I am the greatest, the works I produced have been the greatest, but still... not great enough for me. (Most great people get great because they have a healthy measure of self-criticism, which they use to improve themselves, instead using it to stifle their own creative processes.)
4. They are political and I don't want my family tortured to death. (Think: Salmon Rashdi.)
5. They are controversial; I don't want the posterity to think of me as an asshole.
6. They are pornographic; I don't want my grandchildren to think of me as a perv.
7. They are revealing of family secrets. I don't want my wife, who loves me dearly, to dance on my grave and piss on my headstone.
ETC.

Thanks for correcting me.

Maybe I was mislead by your wording... you said you "thought" this or that. Whereas you KNEW this or that. You'd seen the charts.

No problem, I admit you're right.

And there are an untold number of artists and writers who burn their work before they die.

You don't hear of them, you don't see their works, but they are out there.

Franz Kaffka.

I demand a more significant place in the myth building. It were me and Hanover who originally battled against the evil Pharaoh Porat, leading the first sheep from Egypt PF into exile. Yeah a few goats followed later and Jamal built Jerusalem PF, whatever. — Baden

What's with the Biblical referencing?

"I demand a more significant place in the annals of history. It were me and Hanover who originally gave speeches to the thought-workers of Ostovstorosk Malfactory, the idea-workers of Mozeyevski Ship Yard, the party-workers of Groznenko's Bagel and Cheese Emorium, leading the first workers and peasants from capitalist mess to exile by the Lena river. Yee, we succeeded in getting the philosophy-and-sex workers united, and we marched into the town of Ozolvks, to establish a better future in which every philosopher gives all that they can, and takes away nothing by way of learned insight."

LESS TALKING MORE SHOUTING1!1 — SophistiCat

More pissing. I need more pissing.

However much one may like sausages or David Bowie. — alan1000

David Bowie DOES like sausages.

I think many believe things have deteriorated, but unless you can offer a before and after comparison, you can't describe what that deterioration is. — Hanover

This describes the same thing as what you observed Baden is writing: you THINK many do this or that, but you can't count them or establish a proportion based on empirical studies.

So every time you complain about the lack of X in our world and make efforts for others to see that, you move the world in a positive direction, so you defeat your argument by making it. — Hanover

And yet you don't help to move the world towards more empiricism to support unsupported opinions.*


* Sez GMBA in his empirically unsupported opinion.

There are people who need approval to recognize their own worth, and there are people who do not need that. This is a given personality trait, which you can't change. It's as innate as height or the colour of your eyes. Of course most people tend to be somewhere in-between on the spectrum between these two extremes.

I don't want to argue with you further along these lines though, especially because the argument is not personal to me. It's not an original pet theory or anything and I fully expect it not to resonate with everyone. — Baden

Fair enough.

But part of my point is that the potential for rebellion is quashed through the creation of people who consider themselves happy enough in a benign way not to rebel but are still too paralysed or weakened by inner conflicts to develop their potentials. — Baden

Yes, I am sorry this is not a perfect world, too. And the reason they don't reach their inner potential is not their inner turmoil, but a fiercely competitive environment.

I think you’re making my point for me again here, to be honest. — Baden

You're right. With that paragraph I strengthened your position as well as mine. It is a flip-flop switch; some say potato, some say patahto. Is the entertainment bad in a consumer society, because it makes people not entertain themselves in a different way, or is entertainment good, because it is good thing to be entertained.

Maybe. Although I would like to think there are better options than spending 9 or 10 hours getting stressed out in an identity that’s forced on us for practical reasons, just so we can consume mass media to de-stress enough to do it all again. Maybe you’re the pessimist and I’m the optimist here. — Baden

Well... child mortality would be around 80%, famine and pestilence would wipe out a large chunk of the population on a regular basis, Visigoths and Vikings would slaughter the men, enslave their children and make concubines of their women... or else we work 8-9-10 hours a day and put up with that, in order to have good medicine, stability, law and order. And outside entertainment.

I don't, to be fair. I did spend a couple of years primarily as a financial speculator though and that was a mask that I found harder to remove and less compatible with identities I value far more than I would have liked. — Baden

I believe that. But to blame the lifestyle of nearly half of the entire globe and the society that supports that structure and lifestyle, because you were in the wrong job?? Yes, people do that. People do condemn Catholicism because of first- or manieth-hand news events of priests abusing children. People also hate minorities, and if something bad happens because of the action of a member of a visible minority group to them, then they will REALLY hate them. People who keep flunking at school or get beaten up by a thug every day in front of the girls' change room, hate school and hate every being that is inside that school.

You hate society because you were forced into making money while you rather would have poed poetry or swam with dolphins. I mean, I am not surprised, but I don't find your reaction all that fair. There are people in this world on whom the investor hat looks good, much like there are people who get robbed by a gang of Puerto Ricans and they will still go on demonstrations which demand to stop police brutality against Puerto Ricans. And most people do enjoy school... high school is cool... well, okay, in the first two weeks of the school year when they get back in September.

Your article was convincing to you, but not to others who do not feel that their personal lot in life is universally similar to everyone else's.

I don't for one moment deny that your sentiments were true. You described your experience, and that was a very insightful description. It is not applicable to all other people, though.

I'm suggesting that if someone says 'that painting is good', they probably don't mean 'that painting is any 3 or more of advantageous, pleasant, helpful, or accommodating.' It seems unlikely. What advantage would the average person find in a painting? What would it help them to do? What wishes would it accommodate? They might find it pleasant, — Herg

You got the pleasant right. And you're right, it is not to the viewer's advantage, the look of the painting.

In the meantime, since I wrote that first paragraph, bert1 has helped me out. He started with Hume's claim that pleasure (of any kind, not only physical, base, dirty pleasures) is the... forgot what he called it, but basically, it is the end of all endeavours. Beyond pleasure there is nothing a man or a woman wishes to attain.

So bert1 improved my definition by saying that something that is "good" is pleasure, or else an instrument to attain pleasure.

Then I went into saying that that's basically why "good" is a concept that is subject to subjectivity: it is fully subjective. I feel my pleasure, but not yours. (Althoug I can interpret your reactions to know you are in a state of pleasure.)

I rested on my laurels after that.

Banno, (please correct me if I say something that is not attributable to you) raised objections, and I shot them down saying that raising those objections served only his objective to debunk my definition, but the object, kernel to his objection, was using the word "good" in a different context.

I also talked about equivocation; meaning, that the same word means different things in different contexts.

I hope this explains that "good" is something that is pleasurable, or else it is helpful, accommodating and advantageous.

And finally, your second comment:

I think someone could find a painting unpleasant (think of Francis Bacon's Screaming Popes) and still think the painting was good. — Herg

They would have to elaborate what they meant by the painting being good, if it did not please them. I really can't wrap my head around that. I mean, there are tons of possibilities: good, because other people find it pleasing, or good, because it is the print of the queen's head on the twenty-dollar Canadian note, or good because the paint is not chipping yet, and there are no dried spit spots on the surface. In this latter sense, they are pleased with the condition, it pleased them, so it is some form of pleasure. In the case of the queen on the $20 bill, it pleases them because they know the money is not counterfeit. Good, because if other people like it, the person who does not revels in the fact that pleasure is still disseminated by this picture in the world at large, and though he does not personally enjoy viewing it, knowing that other people are caused to feel pleasure viewing the painting is pleasing him.

I really don't know, next time ask the guy and then get back to me, what he precisely means.

I Googled 'definition definition' (that was fun), and it said 'a statement of the exact meaning of a word, especially in a dictionary.' That will do for me. — Herg

So there you have it. The definition is a statement of the exact meaning of a word, especially in a dictionary.

Now look up what it says about the entry "life" and the entry "time".

This is an interesting concept you raised, Baden. You look at the effect in a negative, pessimistic light. I just happened now to look at it from a positive, optimistic light.

I go back to my youth, to age 15-16. I walked into a second-hand bookstore and had a glance at a Stieler map. Stieler was the prominent atlas-producing publishing giant's, Perthes's, in Gotha, Germany, main scribe. Stieler and then many others also in the employ of Justus Perthes, published many editions of a world atlas, starting in the 1820s. The maps I bought then were made in the 1870s. I was stunned by their beauty. I bought a few on the spot, at a really good price, because at the time Hungary was poor, and there was no competition for antiques.

I was a consumer, who diversified and had an experience that he cherished for the rest of his life.

I often go to dollar stores. I look at the displayed merchandise: shiny, clean, appetizing. From lathles to bicycle pumps to socks to Javex bleach. I shop there because that's where my dollar goes the farthest.

Do I feel guilty, or depressed, or remorseful, or do I leave with a bad taste in the mouth, when I exit the store with two full bags? No, I don't.

I figure it's the gathering instinct that makes us go out shopping for sole sake of the joy of shopping. In the old times (back 20 to 200,000 years ago) there were no dollar stores, the poor suckers, but they found the same happiness when they happened upon a nice-looking pebble or a sharp stone, or a colorful mushroom. A flower, a stinking carcass that my forebearers still deemed edible, a cool spring with clean fresh water, a nest of tree slugs, quite a delicacy.

Shopping is not forced upon people. It is people who force stores to sell stuff. Because a consumer society caters to the need of entertainment; the diversification of the self or the identity, and the many hats we have to wear, do not diminish, but enhance the joy of living. We, humans, revel in diversity, and uniform and unchanging life we definitely see as boring. Uniformity and repetition ad infinitum is only done because we are forced to do that. The uniformity of the Islam, the dredging work in factories and behind sewing machines, the repetition of constantly killing people or torturing them to squeeze out a confession (I am talking about executioners' jobs at Quantanimo Bay), takes a toll on people. The horrid workplace is what makes us dream of retirement. Why? Because most of us wear the same one hat at the work place; typically and historically for 9-10 hours a day. We get stressed out and we just want to go home and plutt ourselves in front of the TV until dinner is ready, then we crawl to bed to die until resurrection of us the next morning, to go to work.

I think the separation of the self from the multitudinality of the identities we need to fill in our changing roles in our lives is not a bad thing. It is a good thing.

:wink:

I think that what you have provided is a list of reasons why we might want to call something 'good' — that it's advantageous, or pleasant, or helpful, or accommodating — which is not the same thing as a definition. — Herg

Define definition then for me, please, so I can proceed on satisfying your demand to comply to the form of the definition of any thing, as defined by you.

Excuse my stupidity, but how is it possible to give a property properties without first considering goodness to be an an object in itself? — NOS4A2

This can be shown by the following thought experiment:

A man thinks of a house. He calls that house "House". The name of that house is House, while it is at the same time a house.

Now someone comes along, and saye to the man, "I hear you have something that you call House. But I actually don't know what you call House: your car key, your fridge, or your wife. What is the thing that you call House?" To which the man truthfully answers, "Well, the thing that I call the House is my thought of a house."

I hope this clears up your confusion on how it is possible for qualities to have qualities.

This can be transferred very easily by lateral thought to how it is very possible for properties to have properties.

Ethics is not about what you want. — Banno

I don't know where you get this from. I agree with it, but the thread is not about ethics; you are derailing the topic. The topic is, as stated, "good" is impossible to define. (Not worded precisely as this, but it's close enough.)

To bring in ethics is, as I see it, is to counter the definition I and bert1 proposed. But we had no notion of bringing in ethics. You did, which is fine, but it's not a counter-argument to the definition. It is a completely different kettle of fish, so to speak.

You are pivoting the definition of "good" and the notion that ethics dictate we must do good, on the point that both endeavours use the word "good".

I put forth, that it's an equivocation. The "good" in the definition defines a subjective quality. The good in ethical theory describes a restricted value range of good, namely, that only those good-s are acceptable in the "ought" domain of ethics, which contain no "bad" for anyone concerned.

This restriction may be warranted in ethical theory of the "ought" kind, but it diverts from the definition of "good", and unnecessarily so for the general meaning of "good". The "ought" ethics does ask for a certain condition for "good" that is NOT part of the general meaning of "good", therefore the two are not equivalent, and that is where your fallacy lies: you want to force a meaning on a general meaning, which forced meaning is only applicable to a sub-field of ethics. And that is an invalid application.

Yes, Bert, ethics is about what we ought do. And I guess it's clear, so far as it goes, that we ought do what is right, and we ought do what is good. — Banno

That's directional ethics, for lack of my knowledge of a better, well-accepted expression for it. Instructional ethics is another way to summarize it in an expression. It is, however, not the only area of ethics, and it does not apply to all domains of thoughts on ethics.

Therefore to say that ethics is about what we ought to do is false, inasmuch as the tone presupposes that it's the purpose of all ethics; well, it's not.

This is now a serious response, Baden:

The fragmentation of the self is not haphazard. It is directed by the person's needs, which is in turn shaped by his biology, psyche, and socio-economic status, as well as his level of intellect, highest eduation level achieved, marital status, and not in the least the colour of his skin. Other factors play into effect, as well: his height, his looks, his Myers-Briggs learning inventory.

The fragmentation is therefore not random, and not haphazard.

The fragmented society's individuals clump together by their preferences, needs, and fulfilment levels.

Social cohesion, mutual support, even if not said but only implied by approval of similarity by lifestyle, reduces the impact of the inner conflict.

There is a hard-and-fast proof to the notion that people's inner conflicts are not significant: hardly anybody commits suicide. Most people are happy, sort of, while they imagine that they could be happier if some of their needs were better satisfied. This, of course, is a fallacy, and it is perpetuated by the Hollywood-style tabloid journalism.

In all, you may be right, it is hard to tell from here. But even if you are right, it is not a problem of significant proportions, either for society, or for the individual. In other words, people are complacent enough to stay with the status quo. When the status quo is really not good, they rebel. So since there have been no rebellions in a long time in Western consumer societies, this is another indication that the situation is not as dire as you depict.

The fragmentation is apparently adequately handled by the selves. While the society the selves live in promotes inner fragmentation, according to you, still, the same society provides outlets to alleviate the potential suffering of the self: by the clumping of like selves together, and by being diverse and vibrant and constantly changing enough to divert the attention of the self from his inner conflicts (if the inner conflicts due to fragmentation of the self indeed exist at all, of which I am not convinced) so they don't get consumed by thoughts of their inner conflicts generated by a consumer society they are a part of. Because of the distractions. (Mentioned this last bit for the benefit of those who forgot how the sentence started by the time we ended up here.)

Certainly an individual living multiple roles is not necessarily doomed to internal conflicts. Cannot a famous skier be also an effective physicist, while also being an attentive father and husband? — jgill

This what you described can happen in any society. But Baden is talking about a consumer society. So unless he buys the latest ski equipment every season, spends half his money on Walmart shit, and consumes his children in Aspic sauce, he is not actually a good example of what Baden was saying.

I'll shut up now. Please don't kick me out of this site.

The freedom of identity a technically advanced consumer society facilitates (identity commodified / personal paralysis packaged as endless novelty) contains within it the anaesthetic that neutralizes a more valuable freedom, the freedom of resistance against an orientation towards the self that dictates that a self must consume even the self and in as many flavours as possible in order to fully experience itself. — Baden

Maybe. But I assure you: it's still more fun than praying on the call of the muezzin seven times a day and prostrating on a prayer mat and submitting your self, mind, and soul to the Islam.

And it's also more fun than not seeing woman for decades, and going every day out into snow desert at forty below, and chopping wood ten hours each day, only to crawl back into your bungalow called "Shtalag 9" and subsist on 800 calories each day as well-earned reward for your hard work, while some other people keep beating you severely for any small infraction and calling your mother names.

The freedom of identity a technically advanced consumer society facilitates (identity commodified / personal paralysis packaged as endless novelty) contains within it the anaesthetic that neutralizes a more valuable freedom, the freedom of resistance against an orientation towards the self that dictates that a self must consume even the self and in as many flavours as possible in order to fully experience itself. — Baden

I am not kidding you: I walked into Walmart tomorrow, and I asked 10 random people if this applies to them, and I handed them a slip of paper with the quote by you, and I read up aloud from my copy the same.

I assure you: not one person agreed with what you wrote about THEM. (Because it's basically about them, the people, right? Not about some over-educated Ph.D. in philosophy who has too much time on his hand.)

I got a few responses:

Person 1: (Giggle)

Person 2: "Get away from me, creep, or I call security!!"

Person 3: "Woof!!!" (Person 3 was a service animal)

Person 4: "Heavy... man, this is deep shit. Which isle does it come from? I wanna get me one. (Mutters:) I hope they have it in my size."

Person 5: "Yee-haw! Whoa Nelly, this ain't got no (unintelligible gurgle) on the derriere of a pregnant cow!"

Person 6: "Not quite. The inverted anachronism of consumer-centred identity thefts are encroaching on the proletariat's main goal, which is to wrangle from the hands of the bourgeois all available rechargeable MiNH battery refuel gizmos. Or gizmoes, I'm not quite sure, actually, about that very point."

Person 7: (Belch.)

Person 8: "Careful, buddy. I work out five days a week and have a seventh-degree black belt."

Person 9: (Was speechless, and froze in an immovable standing positions. When I left the store, he was still in that stunned state.)

Person 10: "Sure, sure, for sure, man. Just put this in your pocket, and hand it back to me when you're outside the store. Trust me."

:up: :smile:

The difficulty with “good”, I think, is that it describes someone desiring certain qualities or properties in another thing, but is not itself a quality or property, and so is unavailable for any analysis that excludes good objects and the people who say they are good. — NOS4A2

True, but this problem can be circumvented by giving parametric conditions or assigning parametric properties to the quality of "good".

The allusion to Thrasymachus was just to draw an analogy that what you're saying is similar to what he said in The Republic -- not exactly so, but given the above scenario, can you see the parallels? — Moliere

Maybe I would, but I read The Republic a long, long time ago, and stopped halfway, although I enjoyed it tremendously. But I can't see the parallel, because I can't remember the passage that deals with Thrasymachus.

My fault. I admit.

Did you somewhere indicate how good is more or other than just what benefits an individual relative to their needs? — Joshs

You're right. Every definition is circular. But it has been created, and it is not impossible therefore to create a definition for "good". The initial opening post asked this question, and I answered it.

180 never takes responsibility for the clarity of his own posts. — bert1

It's been a long-standing fracture between 180 and me. I like the guy, actually, I respect him, and I bow for his knowledge and mind. But he doggonedly avoids being clear and most times even being committal. It's not a fault, only an irritation. The fault is when he expects people to know what he means when his description is less than scanty.

I took it out of context because there was no indication of other context.

Banno made his opinion.

You approved it with a flame.

I did not like that you agreed with THAT opinion.

You did not indicate that only PART of that opinion of Banno's you agreed with.

I took it out of context *by what you meant to indicate, not by what you ACTUALLY indicated* because you did not separate the context out of the whole post pinpointing what you meant by the flame.

Suppose someone comes up with an example that they claim debunks your definition. How can we tell whether their claim is true? — Herg

Good question.

By examining the logic and finding that the definition fails.


------------------------

Caveat: the definition I gave has been amended properly by Bert1, which states that pleasure is good, and a final means by itself (as per Hume), and the other thing that is good is a process, tool, action, opinion, that promotes the eventuality of a pleasure to happen.

------------------------

The definition fails if you find something that is good, yet does not fit the criteria of the definition.

For instance: A triangle has three points and three sides.

I have a two-dimensional object that has four sides and four points.

Therefore the two-dimensional object I have is not a triangle, because it fails to satisfy the criteria given in the definition of the triangle.

I'm sympatico with
I don't see that your definition [of good] is of much help in working out what we ought do, which is, after all, the point of ethics.
— Banno — 180 Proof

I am sorry, 180 Proof, that you expect the impossible.

Think about it.

Banno put down his opinion in a post. You replied with a flaming approval of an icon.

I am supposed to decipher from that, that you only meant a particular point in Banno's reply, not the entire reply, and I am supposed furthermore to be able to pinpoint precisely which part you are agreeing with?

How can you seriously expect that people will properly guess that when you give a blanket statement of approval by indicating ONLY whom it goes to, and a flaming icon?

It is now obvious that you did not mean the entire post to be approved, and I am glad for it. It is only obvious, however, because you explained in long hand and naming each term in unambiguous ways. I suggest you do that in the first place, and not as an apology after a misunderstanding has happened and been reported.

I am glad that I misread your intention of what you meant to say, but I won't take the blame for this misreading. You must really be more clear in your communication if you want people to understand properly what you actually mean.

Your argument's fault will become clear to you once you establish to yourself and get comfortable that "good" is not an absolute term; it is a term that is highly subjective. Therefore one person's good could be another person's not good.

There are absolutes in this world, and there are relatives. "Good" is a relative. Only ethicists on the Kantian (?) vein of thought (or maybe in other veins as well) think that there is some ideal, everlasting, and perfect "good" out there.

Well, sorry to break your bubble, but there is NO Santa Claus and there is no universal "good" out there. Not one that we have discovered yet, anyway.

Once you realize that "good" is subjective, then you must make sure you understand as well that since it's subjective, something can be good and not good at the same time, but NOT IN THE SAME RESPECT. This is of utter importance, that you apply this consideration.

As Thrasymachus pointed out, what is just is what the powerful say. To even have an opinion on the matter, one must first be powerful. — Moliere

Anyone can have any opinion on any matter. No powerful social standing is required to have an opinion. I am not powerful in any sense, and yet, as you can see, I have opinions. If you are powerful, which I can't tell from here, but it's possible, then I can see how you can agree with Th...us.

↪Banno :fire: — 180 Proof

:naughty: :rage: :down:

I can't beleive, 180 Proof, that you bought Banno's argument, which is full of holes when you consider my definition of "good" as amended by bert1. Have you read that part of the thread?

All I need is one (1) example that debunks my definition as amended by bert1.

You applaud something that miserably failed at it.

As I see the general problem in the reception of the definition is that people fail to distinguish between what THEY, the readers think is good, and what the actual point of view of of the actor in an action deems is good.

Without internalizing that there is a difference there, the whole exercise is to the shits. And that is certainly not my ineptitude, but that of those who are unable to see the importance of it.

I am certainly HUGELY surprised that you failed to see too, what a difference it makes to see or not to see the importance of the point of view.

In more philosophical terms, your account is that the extension of good is the very same as the extension of any of advantageous and pleasant and helpful and accommodating.

Moore's point is that even were this so, the open question shows that the intension is different.

And that's the problem with the open question - if there were such an extensional equivalence, then as you might say, who cares if it is not intensionally equivalent?

So Putin's invasion of Ukraine is, for him, advantageous and helpful and accommodating, if perhaps not altogether pleasant. And hence by your standard, a good.

So I don't see that your definition is of much help in working out what we ought do, which is, after all, the point of ethics. — Banno

I can't respond to the first part to "... intensionally equivalent?" because my education level does not include the knowledge of the names of concepts you mention. In particular, I don't know what you mean by "open quiestion", "intensional difference", "intensional equivalence", and "intension". I am not sure whether you wanted to say "intention"? I am not going to guess, I just say that I can't comprehend that part of your reply.

But your example that follows does not debunk my definition as amended by bert1. You admit that to Putin the invasion of Ukraine is good; then you turn around and say it's not good. But you did not invade the Ukraine. Putin's will was fulfilled. He feels pleasure. So compare this to the original definition.

And if you say to this: but Putin is not pleasured (emotionally) because the invasion has gone sour, then obviously the definition stands, because the goal that would have pleasured him, and which was going to be a "good" for Putin, did not happen. So the "good" is missing, because the act that would please him is also missing.

What you, I, or the rest of the world thinks is immaterial when you consider what is good for Putin.

And your opinion whether my definition serves the point of ethics is immaterial. All you needed to do is to give one, (1) ONE example that debunks my definition. Whichh you failed to provide.

My definition with bert1's adjustment certainly does not coincide with your idea of ethics. That's is not a fault with the definition, it is an artificial problem you superimposed on the whole. You are saying "whatever theory does not serve my idea of what ethics should be is bad", is not an argument. Your insistence on "good" to serve your ethical ideal is a demand that is unwarranted. It is a haphazard, arbitrary demand.

Assuming bert1 is a Kantian, does it follow that which is willed, is the good?
— Shawn

Kantian or not, it's clear that bert1's account leads quickly to incoherence...

From a rapist's point of view, raping someone is fab, if a bit sweaty.
— bert1

He can't say for sure if even rape is not a good.

While Bert may have trouble seeing it, I'm sure most here would agree that what someone wills is not the very same concept as what is good.
— Banno

It's not good to you, it's not good to society, it's not good to most people, and it's not good for me, either, and presumably not to bert1 either, but to the rapist raping someone is good, because it gives the rapist pleasure.

You really did not see that?

According to my definition, you always must consider the point of view and the time. "At the same time and in the same respect."

You are one I suspect who deliberately did not read my definition, and then Bert1's adjustment on it, or else who deliberately ignored its contents, in order to be able to ignore its impact on the topic.

I abhor rape, and all senseless violence. But you must consider the logic imbedded in this vile example, which still proves the point.

The point of reference is the rapist's view. All other reference points are ignored for the time being, because we want to focus on how the rapist views rape. This was discussed in the definition, and you wilfully ignore that part:

Please don't juxtapose something that is good now but will be not good later, or something that is good for Mr. X but not good for Ms. Y. Those violate the rule in the definition, "at the same time and in the same respect." — god must be atheist

Regarding your argument:

I'm sure most here would agree that what someone wills is not the very same concept as what is good. — Banno

You conveniently switch (for your own benefit) and switch in an invalid way, the evaluation of "good" in Bert1's example. He says the rapists wills to rape, and to him it's good. You say "to most here" rape is not good. You are switching the point of view in a clandestine yet invalid way.

Your argument does not hold.

What a mess. So far every contribution to this thread has used circular terms to ‘define’ the good. — Joshs

No, no, no. Read the previous page. Read my definition of "good". It is not circular.

The first thought I had was justice.

Justice is generally considered good.

And yet justice is not...

...a thing that is advantageous and pleasant and helpful and accommodating OR at least three at the same time and in the same respect of the aforementioned qualifiers.
— god must be atheist

because sometimes justice must deal with rule-breaking. So while it is disadvantageous and unpleasant and unhelpful nor accommodating to punish people for breaking the rules, it's a part of what makes justice just: That the rules are fairly applied, even if inconvenient. — Moliere

I think there is one fault in your logic. The rules for justice are set by a law. The law most likely is to promote something that the lawmaker considers "good". To punish the law breaker is just; this will deter the lawbreaker from breaking the law in the future, and will show an example to other would-be-law-breakers to not break the law. Therefore justice is good, because it reduces the number of breaches of law. And that is good for the law-maker. It is advantageous, helpful and accommodating for the law-maker.

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I have a feeling, that what adjustment Bert1 had done to my definition, and my ensuing insights, already have had an extensive literature, and they are well-known theories in philosophy.

Where I come in is that I intuited the same truth, if you want to call it truth, without any prior reading; and that I tried to adjust the discussion to become sensible.

This is not the first time this happens to me. I invented an inertia navigation device, in principle; then I went to the library to research how to build its components, and there was a roomful of books denoted to the invention.

There had been quite a few revelations in my life like that. Coming to a realization that I thought was original, only because of my lack of previously engaging myself in reading about it in the applicable literature.

One day, I am sure, I'll come up with something that is truly original.

The only question is, is this going to happen before or after I die.