thank you for the reply. :pray:

- :up:

↪Leontiskos I've read that but I can't see where it's actually explained what "good" means. It only seems to say that good is a "transcendental" and so not reducible to some natural property. There is mention of "desires", but it clarifies that it's not that something is good because we desire it but that we desire it because it is good.

So all I get from this is that "good" is supervenient and desirable. It still seems that "good" is undefined. How am I to distinguish "good" from some other supervenient and desirable property? Even if it's the only supervenient and desirable property, unless "good" means "supervenient and desirable" it is as-of-yet undefined.

Am I just misreading or misunderstanding the paper? — Michael

This seems fairly close. Note that we are talking about pp. 11-13 of the paper. Simpson provides various related definitions on those pages. We could define good as that which supervenes on being vis-a-vis desirability.

Aquinas will state this in various related ways. For example:

Hence it is clear that goodness and being are the same really. But goodness presents the aspect of desirableness, which being does not present. — Aquinas, ST Ia.Q5.A1

The distinction here is between what is according to thingness (res) and what is according to idea/thought (ratio). So as Simpson illustrates, just as truth is that which supervenes on being vis-a-vis judgment, so goodness is that which supervenes on being vis-a-vis desire. Both judgment and desire are matters of thought/idea, and so the distinction between being and notions like truth or goodness is only introduced by way of thought/idea. That which does not recognize judgment does not recognize truth; and that which does not recognize desirability does not recognize goodness.

I don’t know about any rules that I could apply to anyone else but me — AmadeusD

Or do you mean that you don't have an authoritarian personality trait (strong enough) to be willing to impose your rules on other people?

And don't get me wrong. I am a moral realist and have no difficulty talking metaphysics. I think an act is right or wrong, not subject to my subjective definitions or beliefs. — Hanover

But how do you know, _without_ your subjective definitions or beliefs, which act is right and which one is wrong?

How can you know anything _without_ your subjective definitions or beliefs?

You are quite forward about being unable to define good and bad, and so I am focusing on those. Usually someone who cannot define good or bad does not go on to depend on those words in their philosophical or moral theories. — Leontiskos

I think the moral realist's point is to treat good and bad in axiomatic terms, to take them for granted, to take one's understanding of them for granted.
Because any kind of defining them or acknowledging subjective definitions or beliefs would be a type of relativism, thus diminishing the axiomatic nature of said good and bad.

Once one starts to define good and bad, one is on thin ice, a slippery slope. Which is precisely what we don't want when talking about good and bad.

If I push down your hand and see your cards, would you say I've violated a rule that applies to someone other than you, or are we always playing different games, free to do as we will, living in the fray of free expression? — Hanover

That's a totally different question. You're asking about something which (I presume, but could be wrong) has set (yet, arbitrary) rules which are 'the rules of the game'. We have no such for morality - or at least, that's my contention. I've never seen anyone lay out some kind of rule that can just be rejected without any certain objection - If we're playing five-card stud and you get up from your chair and press my cards down to see them, you not only break the arbitrary and pre-ordained rules, you actually get thrown out of the game.

No such deserts exist for moral acts, Imo. Rape makes me really uncomfortable, in many, many ways. It is not my place to say if someone does not share that intuition that they are morally 'wrong'. I don't know what that would consist in. I don't think anyone does. They just are uncomfortable to a degree that they cannot justify telling themselves they made it up.

are we always playing different games, free to do as we will, living in the fray of free expression? — Hanover

Society is a game, in this conception, but otherwise, yeah. I don't see an obstacle. Well, other than one's discomfort.

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).

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.

Probably a little of both, But i'm resistant to the former as a fairly involved and directive (as an attribute) father. I must have some level of udnerstanding that I could know better than others. Maybe I'm overcautious, so unless its patent (i.e you're bloody 12 - sit down) I refuse to engage.

That said, my understanding is that I cannot formulate a rule that accounts for my moral view on any given thing that I could universalise intellectually. I just can't understand how it's possible that my intuitions aren't entirely fallible and apply only to me as their source.

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. — Bob Ross

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.

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

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

I am exactly in this camp, in terms of Bob's system here.

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. — Bob Ross

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

The Arabic word for "moral" is "أخلاقي". But if we take an Arabic-speaking nation like Saudi Arabia, the things they describe as being أخلاقي are in many cases not the things that we describe as being moral. Islamic countries tend to have different values to non-Islamic countries.

If we follow your reasoning then it must be that the English word "moral" isn't a translation of the Arabic word "أخلاقي" as each word is used to describe different things.

So what we mean by "moral" isn't what they mean by "أخلاقي", so there aren't actually any moral disagreements as we're comparing apples and oranges. In fact, the Arabic-speaking people don't make any moral claims at all because they don't use the word "moral". They only make أخلاقي claims.

There certainly does seem something problematic here. I think there's a case to be made that the word "moral" is a translation of the word "أخلاقي" even though the things we describe as being moral are not the things they describe as being أخلاقي. If so then it must be that your approach to understanding the meaning of the word "good" is mistaken.

If the words "moral" and "أخلاقي" mean the same thing, and if the things we describe as being moral are not the things they describe as being أخلاقي, then one or both us are wrong in our claimed "particulars".

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

Correct. — Bob Ross

I think you are on the right track. You seem to be proffering something akin to virtue ethics.

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. — Michael

This is a strange interpretation. 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.

You seem to have decided, a priori, that the good and the moral can have nothing to do with motivation. You say things like, "It doesn't matter if X is good or moral, because I will do it or not do it regardless." But if @Bob Ross 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. In that case your a priori assumption simply turns out to be mistaken.

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. — Leontiskos

That's a reasonable approach, but as I explained here there might be some issues with his application of it.

To summarise; those who speak another language might use their word for "good" to describe things that English speakers don't describe as being good. If we follow Bob Ross' reasoning then it would seem to follow that their word for "good" isn't in fact their word for "good" because, given how they use it, it must mean something else.

But this does seem problematic. We often say that people of other cultures (with their own language) have different moral values. How can this be unless relevant words share meaning across languages but are used to describe different things?

Perhaps it's more accurate to say that we use the word "good" to describe things that we ought do and the word "bad" to describe things that we ought not do. This is somewhat supported by the etymology of the related word "moral", from the Latin "moralis" meaning "proper behavior of a person in society". Other languages have their own words used the same way. We just disagree on which things we ought and ought not do.

Regardless, we have to distinguish the type of use that establishes the meaning of a word from the type of use that is a fallible act of predication. It's not entirely clear which kind of use is in play when we say that acts which promote flourishing are good.

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.

Ethics cannot be done from an armchair, — Bob Ross

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

I would say that we do it like any other categories we make: we induce it from particulars.

I see this right triangle, that obtuse triangle, that isosceles triangle, etc. and I formulate/induce the general category of a triangle. — Bob Ross

Ok that particular is fine. It is something the senses can seize upon to make a category distinct.

I see someone helping the needy, being nice to someone else, being respectful, upholding a beings sovereignty, etc. and I induce the general category of the good. — Bob Ross

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.

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. If a reasonable amount of people do agree, then what is the source of that agreement? {It is the instinct towards the objective morality} Especially over time as people get more advanced they would diverge to the point of unrecognizably ramified. That is not at all what is observed. 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.

I see someone torturing a baby for fun, a person being incredibly rude, a person demeaning another, a person being incredibly selfish, a person having complete disregard for life, etc. and I induce the category of the bad. — Bob Ross

Same trouble. 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. You are proving objective morality, not your case.

Just like how I can separate triangles into one pile and squares into another, and more generally shapes into one pile and non-shapes into another, I, too, can put generous acts into one pile and respectful acts into another, and more generally good acts into one pile and bad acts into another. — Bob Ross

Nope, and for the reasons mentioned.

Am I going to sort each into each pile 100% accurately? Probably not. Does that take away from the plentiful evidence that the categories do exist? Certainly not. — Bob Ross

I agree on this spreading and uncertain breakpoint analysis. Just like electron shell discretion in quantum mechanics there do seem to be a lot of this cant or this must rules in life. But is the fact that people can even agree on a category at all over time a hint at some meta level order to the universe? Is awareness then subjective, really. If we get it more right, it's closer to something. What is that? It's objective truth. Is awareness part of morality?

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.

My comment to Leontiskos here is worth reading.

The crux of this issue is this:

Regardless, we have to distinguish the type of use that establishes the meaning of a word from the type of use that is a fallible act of predication. It's not entirely clear which kind of use is in play when we say that acts which promote flourishing are good.

These are two different kinds of claims:

1. A three-sided shape is a triangle
2. This plastic object is a triangle

Whereas (1) is true by definition, (2) isn't, and so (2) is possibly false. If (2) is false then looking at that plastic object isn't going to help us determine the meaning of the word "triangle".

You seem to be saying that "acts which promote flourishing are good" is similar to claim (1). This needs to be justified. Perhaps it's similar to claim (2).

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.

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.

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 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). — Bob Ross

Hmm, ok, I will try to answer in my way and yet include enough detail that you can show me where I am wrong your way.

Agreed that triangle is a repeatable observation in general. But with good you run afoul as mentioned of a second order inclusion of meaning that would not be 'common' and thus relatable without authority intervening arbitrarily. So the concept of the word good is indeed quite the point. Abstracting this concept to G proves my point. Still, in an effort to be more pragmatic and less idealistic with the case, here goes:

What is to flourish? Is it to grow more living things? That seems like a relatively simple to understand assertion. But wait! Without an objective morality my society says flourish indeed means to kill babies born with x traits, and there is a strange eugenic component that my society really really loves, a hierarchy. So, there is a list of physical factors that have a relative/weighted negative flourish value when phenotypically expressed in a baby. The cutoff line or murder-it line changes from time to time in that society.

It turns out this practice would be devastating to what you and I might agree flourishing is, but this hypothetical society (much like our own in many ways) is convinced that it is a sign of flourishing to kill these many types of babies; that an objectively morally corrupt practice is moral. They even add in time wasting ceremonies that are public where everyone drinks the blood of these murdered babies just because they really want to flourish {adding flourish}. Do you not agree that this is possible?

Your conflation of G hides the truth of the missing meta level issue. The concept flourish is not at all associated with the same acts. Your purely (erroneous) logic is tacking on what you think is good based on the existing standard to all sides, making the match a forced and choreographed affair. That is not allowed in an intellectually honest case.

When the Mongoni who have this practice for flourishing meet the Trifal who do not, they start asking at diplomatic meetings where children are present to honor their potential new friends by murdering the offensive children of the other diplomats that have not been culled, in order of course to strengthen the genetic lines of the Trifal, because they are trying to aid the unaware in their moral understanding. This also begins to cast great doubt on the wisdom of the Trifal from the point of view of the Mongoni (not to mention vice versa), who are elite, slow in birthrate, and very very pure (in their own deluded sensibilities).

What is accepted as the concept, 'to flourish' is not the same in both cultures. In Trifal the babies are nurtured at least as properly as human babies are currently by most societies on our planet.

To add to this messed up conflict just waiting to happen, both sides are moral subjectivists, possessed of the erroneous belief that their chosen dogma/delusion is acceptable as a morality. They have no reason therefore to seek a common ground in that sense (and both societies are in decline because they morally value not seeking common ground without shared values). They both believe it is their right to define flourish as a concept. {And therefore both are wrong, immoral}

It does not matter that you respond with no, flourishing obviously means this or we can define this such that … <what> … is included. That is because your own assertion is subjective morality. You cannot include moral value judgments. Your <what> is the objective good. To support subjective morality you nust properly proceed as I did in the example above from a random verb, 'flourish', and then you attach a random (subjective moral) action to it. It could be anything if you are honest.

I could go on and on with such examples.

The trouble is the one example, the triangle, is too simple, and the other example, the good, is too complex and conflated. I mean come on, its bad enough people think two apples are categorical. The principle of uniqueness forbids it in a sense. It is … what … kind of danger to conflate them, to group them, without realizing that the distinction that is the categorical filter is itself arbitrary. This means arbitrary in realized value, not specific current index. For example apples could be fruits conforming to a certain genetic percentage of DNA similarities and that then could be changed later. This opens up the question, with subjective standards, what is real? Was the earlier apple that used to qualify and now does not, an apple then and not now? The people at both times called it an apple. But the people that define 'Scotsman' change. There is no guarantee at all that differing authorities will decide that similar things are similar in parallel. The infinite variety of descriptors and the infinite fineness of the observation make this entirely problematic.

The above paragraph is not actually an argument for subjectivism. What is discovered is not the fact that differing points of view are allowed to make (incorrectly) different value judgments. What is properly discovered is that if a value is a value objectively, it does not change, if the holders or believers of said value are objectively correct. This ties awareness and accuracy at least to morality. This example is insanely small, a tiny tiny iota of perfection, an immorally (in)accurate slice of assertions, still, as contended, better than a subjectivist's point of view. I will say, it is likely that a subjective view or model of the universe is perhaps almost equally likely to come up with a workable description of morality, but that is only almost.

The almost is based in my 'Brevity Principle' which is to say, “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.” That brief period compared to a possible infinity of time stretching out before us is expected to be a certain number of time units in length. So, if you are arguing about what happens after a hideously unknown and unimaginably massive amount of time passes to end objective morality and show that morality is possibly subjective then, why would you bother? There is a minuscule reason to bother, I agree. But that reason is based in objective morality. What are you basing yours on? Such a subjective morality is just not what we are living with now and not what we have been living with since time began. If that's your jam, conjecture as to what might happen in some extremely unlikely time in the future, and not discuss reality as we can measure it now, consistent since it began, then, ok, you have a point.

All of this related to descriptors in the physical realm are one thing. They are one teleological hurdle
to get past. Of course what we call science can help us pin down these differences and ostensibly agreement can be made. But, why do you believe this?

The reason why you believe this (about science or any consistent approach) is the problem. Is it your faith in the meaningfulness and perhaps depth of belief in logic and analysis (consistency) that underscore the problem. That faith is based in something you disavow with your ideas. An objective moralist like me would simply claim, “It is 'good' to be more aware” and such a person is correct. An objective moralist like me would simply claim, “It is 'good' to be more accurate with measurements and judgments related to meaning, both; e.g. accuracy on its own is 'good' ”. Without objective morality the two sides are 'allowed' to subjectively value awareness and accuracy. There can be no honest expectation of any similarity in what awareness and what accuracy are by subjectivists. If you let timeline downstream or competitive practices determine by contest/experimentation what is accurate by any measurement at all, you are proving your dependence on objective morality.

You might go down the route of declaring that awareness and accuracy are not moral considerations at all. That would just be hilarious. I'm going to go with Socrates on this one. There are two sorts of good, virtue and happiness. And I do not remember the context of my brother from another mother's railing at the Athenians, but, I would disagree that these are similar enough to be easily grouped. One side is deontological and the other consequential. They are related but one cannot speak of both in the same breath with moral honesty. Of course, I am stating my subjective moral opinion in an objective moral universe. As Milton might suggest, “let truth and falsehood grapple, truth is strong'.

Awareness and accuracy are virtues. Their expression leads to one and only one meaningful moral consequence, happiness value. Unhappiness is just lower relative happiness. {This is analogous to evil is just a lesser (objective ha ha) value of good} This relationship between happiness and moral choice was my other thread and too much of a digression here. So, I'll trim that desire and try to stay on topic.

The intent to become aware, the need of it, born of the fear of the unknown, is morally sound, objectively.

The intent to become accurate, born of the anger against 'wrongness', yes another debatable value judgment, is morally sound, objectively.

These are laws of the universe. They are tautologies. Belief cannot change them. Of course I am only stating my current belief. Due to perfection as a concept, accuracy, judgment, … one of these beliefs is better than the other, objectively. Although we can be and often are in error, the truth strength of perfection is compelling enough in all the universe to allow infinite wrongness on the other side and still be better to continue that genuine compelling nature objectively. This is why desire exists.

These virtues which are improperly defined only because there is an objective morality which is damnably perfect and I who am defining them am not perfect. This perfection, unattainable, or perhaps the purpose of the universe and a universe ending event, is objective. Perfection itself, as a concept, only has meaning if morality is objective. There is no way to define 'better' without some supposed objectivity. And although we can be wrong about better, truth is not wrong about it. It always seems harder and harder to get to. Why? Again … derail … restraint … on on!

It is hard to define perfection. I say it is objective, so, I should be able to get closer and closer to it. If something is subjective there is no way to get closer and closer to it, because it itself varies. Accuracy itself is dismissed. But a clever definition for perfection is 'A belief and state of being which can never be obtained despite any strength of desire for it, but should be aimed at by virtue of the existence of that desire.' So, if you can be there or believe it entirely, it is not morally correct enough yet. “Doubt may be an unpleasant condition, but, certainty is absurd!” - Voltaire

If something can be more and more (never perfectly) proven as 'right', independently, by a moral agent, then that something involves a suspected morally objective set of value judgments approaching what is referred to as 'Truth'. This is effectively the scientific method and it can be applied to meaning(morality) in the same way, albeit a meta level harder task, as to physical 'science'. In fact the word 'science' is in quotes because the pattern of meaning intrinsic to that term can only be defined by the greater objective moral concepts including of course awareness and accuracy as virtues.

You cannot define what you value amid non-armchair 'science' without an objective morality. That is because if morality can change then awareness and accuracy can change, and let's add in consistency as a value. Is it valuable? What guarantees that is so? Only objective value can do so. The concept of science itself, and any pursuit based on it depends entirely on an approach (never arriving) at … <what>. That <what> is objective truth, perfection.

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. Within any meaningful timeframe (The Brevity Principle outtake), even a split second, all rules could and would change. The living universe would be partaking of the nonsense of subjective morality. Gravity disappears from one second to the next. Random people but a third of the planet are able to see a new color but only for 30 seconds. What did it mean? The weak nuclear force is tripled over the course of two months. Death becomes so morally preferable that all living creatures in the universe go into zombie desire comas and like robots kill themselves. Order itself has a moral component. Objectivity is a principle of order. Subjectivity is a principle of chaos. Both are components of morality. I am not here to denigrate chaos.

Only the overarching order of the universe, objective morality, the only thing in existence, ensures that all moral agents are equally possessed of free will. This balanced scenario allows for an equal dip into both order and chaos as well as that sneaky balance stuff I will call wisdom and adherence to objective moral resonance. So chaos is included and necessary within the order allowing for immorality. Immorality is nothing but the chaotic or orderly over or under expression, out of balance with perfection. With a subjective morality/universe there is nothing to balance, no need for balance, and in fact therefore balance cannot even be formed as a concept. You need objective morality for all of that, in fact, all meaning.

As this single quote resulted in 4 pages of response, I think I will stop here and see if this is taken properly before more investment.

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

“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. — Bob Ross

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

We know what a triangle is because its conditions are contained in its concept. The concept itself determines what particulars are susceptible to come under that concept. We can't do that with 'good'. There is no a priori conception. It must be derived from particulars.. Imo.

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. — Chet Hawkins

What? Subjectivists have no obstacle to relying on their conception of 'the good' and I, personally, am convinced this is what Bob is doing. Establishing a subjective measure for 'good' which has objective parameters.

I don't think 'the good' could possibly be objective. Even your 'version' is just your version. That's it. It has objective parameters, but choosing the basis for what those parameters capture is subjective as anything. Calling it objective relies on telling every other person in teh world that their conception is wrong, if it isn't perfectly aligned (ironically) with yours. It appears to, funnily enough, be doing the exact same heavy lifting Bob's is, but with a more 'This is Inarguable' flavour.

The Good is not normative. — Bob Ross

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

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

Agreed. THE Good, good in and of itself, is an ideal, thus non-contingent given. Not susceptible to instances. It’s an aesthetic judgement of feeling, rather than a discursive judgement of thought.
————-

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.

En passant……

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

Okay.

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. — Bob Ross

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. It is solidarity or incorporation, and it flows from our social nature. Like bees, humans thrive in community; their flourishing is bound up with the flourishing of others, and to deviate from this is to deviate from a pre-critical mindset. Or in other words, Hobbes was wrong when he tried to redefine the human being in terms of selfish individualism.

Regardless, we have to distinguish the type of use that establishes the meaning of a word from the type of use that is a fallible act of predication. It's not entirely clear which kind of use is in play when we say that acts which promote flourishing are good. — Michael

The first very crucial thing to note is that definitions are also fallible. In order to understand the meaning of a predication, one must understand the meaning of the words within the predication, and when one fails to do so their false definition(s) will prevent them from understanding the meaning of the predication, and will also then prevent them from judging the truth of the predication. Once the terms of the predication are understood, the predication is understood, and can be judged true or false. So it is not only the predication that is fallible. In these dialogical contexts it is as often or more often the terms that are the problem.

1. A three-sided shape is a triangle
2. This plastic object is a triangle

Whereas (1) is true by definition, (2) isn't, and so (2) is possibly false. If (2) is false then looking at that plastic object isn't going to help us determine the meaning of the word "triangle". — Michael

This is not a bad example for my point. A plastic object is never a triangle. A triangle is a three-sided polygon, or plane figure. Or, "a three-sided polygon that consists of three edges and three vertices." A plastic object, not being a polygon or plane figure, is never a triangle. The reason someone might think a physical object is a triangle is because your definition is false, or at least ambiguous given the ambiguity of "shape."

Now in some ways I am quibbling, but the point is that our definitions are often less accurate than we suppose.

But this does seem problematic. We often say that people of other cultures (with their own language) have different moral values. How can this be unless relevant words share meaning across languages but are used to describe different things?

Perhaps it's more accurate to say that we use the word "good" to describe things that we ought do and the word "bad" to describe things that we ought not do. This is somewhat supported by the etymology of the related word "moral", from the Latin "moralis" meaning "proper behavior of a person in society". Other languages have their own words used the same way. We just disagree on which things we ought and ought not do. — Michael

I am not a moral (cultural) relativist, so I reject your premise.

The point here is that if two people disagree with respect to a predication, "X is good," then they are either disagreeing about what good is or else they are disagreeing about what X is. Your Arabic case is just another example of this.

As far as I can tell, the argument behind positions such as yours or hypericin's is fairly simple. "There is a great deal of disagreement about whether X is good; therefore there is no correct answer to the question."

In order to understand the meaning of a predication, one must understand the meaning of the words within the predication — Leontiskos

This is the issue I am addressing. We say that something is good, but what does "good" mean?

Bob Ross is saying that we determine the meaning of the word "good" by looking at what sort of things we describe as being good.

The problem with this is that different cultures with different languages describe different things as being good (using their words for "good"), and so if we accept Bob Ross' reasoning then the word for "good" in one language doesn't mean the same thing as the word for "good" in another language.

If this is an unacceptable conclusion then we must reject Bob Ross' reasoning. Something else is required to determine the meaning of the word "good".

The point here is that if two people disagree with respect to a predication, "X is good," then they are either disagreeing about what good is or else they are disagreeing about what X is. — Leontiskos

This is a false dichotomy. Some people claim that chastity is good; others that it isn't. Both groups might agree on what chastity is, and on what it means to be good (e.g. "something we ought support"), but still disagree on whether or not chastity is good.

I’m not arguing for cultural relativism. — Michael

Okay.

The first culture describes some X as being A. The second culture describes that same X as being not B.

This is an entirely plausible scenario. Even though “A” means “B” they are used to describe different things. What this shows is that we cannot determine the meaning of “A” (or “B” or “good”) simply by looking at what sort of things are described as being “A” (or “B” or “good”).

In this scenario, one of the cultures is wrong.

So it isn’t as simple as saying “good” means “promotes flourishing” because we use the word “good” to describe acts which promote flourishing. Like one of the cultures above we might be wrong. — Michael

So A=B?

I agree one of the cultures is wrong; I agree mere description/assertion does not suffice.

Going back to my previous post:

The point here is that if two people disagree with respect to a predication, "X is good," then they are either disagreeing about what good is or else they are disagreeing about what X is. — Leontiskos

If one party says X is good, and another party says X is bad, then the first thing to do is to figure out whether they mean the same thing by good/bad. If they do mean the same thing (and they also mean the same thing by "X"), then one of them is wrong. If they do not mean the same thing, then they could both be right (or wrong). A culture is a kind of party.

So it isn’t as simple as saying “good” means “promotes flourishing” because we use the word “good” to describe acts which promote flourishing. Like one of the cultures above we might be wrong. — Michael

As I see it the way you go about this is wrong-headed. If @Bob Ross posits that good is that which promotes flourishing, then it is not a proper response to say, "But what if that's not what good is?" The only proper response is to offer an alternative definition of good, with your own competing arguments (or to do so implicitly with a concrete critique of the definition).

The token "good" does not have any intrinsic signification. Therefore the bottom-level question, "But what if that's not what 'good' means?," doesn't make any sense. The meaning of words comes from language users, and is tied up with their intent. This intent is generally communal/linguistic, but it is always a back-and-forth between the community and the individual. The lexical vocabulary of the community influences the individual, and the lexical vocabulary of the individual influences the community. Thus to properly interact with an individual's predication or definition must involve bringing to bear either communal meaning or else your own counter-individual meaning (it's either "we don't use the words that way"/"that is untrue for us" or "I don't use the words that way"/"that is untrue for me" because...).

As I see it, your meta-error is that you attempt to disagree, yet without managing to properly interact in the way just set out. You are effectively doing something akin to saying, "But what if the token g-o-o-d doesn't mean 'promotes flourishing'?"

(Philosophers like Aristotle and Wittgenstein are right to pay attention to common use. It's just that common use isn't the be-all end-all for philosophical discussion.)

The only proper response is to offer an alternative definition of good — Leontiskos

You're shifting the burden of proof. If Bob Ross suggests that the meaning of "good" is X then he needs to support this claim. I don't need to offer an alternative.

The meaning of words comes from language users, and is tied up with their intent. This intent is generally communal/linguistic, but it is always a back-and-forth between the community and the individual. — Leontiskos

I address this in my post above, which I rewrote before you replied (because it said that you hadn't been online for 2 hours). I'll say it again:

Bob Ross is saying that we determine the meaning of the word "good" by looking at what sort of things we describe as being good.

The problem with this is that different cultures with different languages describe different things as being good (using their words for "good"), and so if we accept Bob Ross' reasoning then the word for "good" in one language doesn't mean the same thing as the word for "good" in another language.

If this is an unacceptable conclusion then we must reject Bob Ross' reasoning. Something else is required to determine the meaning of the word "good".

The Good, however, as an ideal, can never be constructed in accordance with a conception, hence remains a different kind of judgement. — Mww

:ok: