Good is saving and improving lives. Evil is deliberate harm and the murder of sentient beings. How do you define good and evil? — Truth Seeker

I wait until the argument settles. What good is saving lives? Saving a life is one thing--there, you saved me from injury, but there is nothing in the term "saving" that has any ethicality to it. I can save this cup of coffee from being tossed down the drain. And life? what is it about life that makes it part of a moral conversation?

And yet non-existence means that if good exists, that would mean the destruction of good. — Philosophim

Non-existence, however, includes "good" ...

Good by definition is what should exist ...

I don't see any reason to accept this "definition". "Should exist" implies a contradiction from the negation of a state of affairs, yet I cannot think of such an actual/non-abstract negation. A more apt, concrete use for "good" is to indicate that which prevents, reduces or eliminates harm (i.e. suffering or injustice).

... so it would never be good to eliminate good, and thus have complete non-existence.

Well, I think "complete non-existence" (i.e. nothing-ness) is impossible ... and who said anything about "eliminating" existence? Non-existence is an ideal state of maximal non-suffering in contrast to existence (of sufferers) itself.

How do you define good and evil? — Truth Seeker

Here's my secular/naturalistic, negative consequentialist shorthand:
• Good indicates that which prevents, reduces or eliminates harm (i.e. suffering or injustice).
• Bad indicates that which fails to prevent, reduce or eliminate harm ...
• Evil indicates that which prevents, reduces or eliminates any or all potential(s) for doing or experiencing Good.

What difference does it make? — frank

If ethics is grounded outside of ethical problem solving and thinking that issues from sources of variability, that is, different cultures, subcultures where ethical problems actually brew into issues, then what could this be? I am arguing that it is not a principle at all, nor does it emerge out of a matrix of problem solving. It is the ground of ethics, what makes ethics possible---what it IS.
Look at the matter apophatically: What is NOT in the ethicality of the prima facie prohibition not apply thumbscrews to my neighbor? It is the incidentals, the entanglements. The facts that my neighbor is a serial killer who perhaps deserves it, that I have some religious convictions that call for it, or that my neighbor knows something that needs to be tortured out of her, and so on. And these entanglement have their underpinnings in more entanglements : facts about upbringing, abiding beliefs and conditions that are part of my culture, and there really is no end to this. These are dismissed because they have no inherent ethicality about them. There is nothing in a promise, a stated duty, an honor driven mission, and so on, that is inherently ethical. They all beg the question: what good is this? Even a clearly contingent sense of good, like calling something a good couch or bad knife, begs this same question: what good is a soft cushion or a well functioning recliner? The term 'good' is like the copula 'is': it is everywhere, saturates stated affairs. 'Is' leads to more inquiry about what it IS that is a response to the question of what something IS. The good/bad lie with mere interest, caring, curiosity, wonder, seeking, desiring, and on and on. See Dewey's Art As Experience for a rather mundane but clear talk about this.

So, this was just to be clear as to what is on the table. The difference? No objective values and torturing my neighbor ha no status at all in the most basic analysis. The opposite of this is that it does have status foundationally. How this plays out is not given; not yet. Perhaps in some future Hegelian frame (think of Slavoj Zizek) of discovery this will become "unhidden," (as Heidegger put it). But what is acknowledged is the gravitas of our existence and our actions and experiences. This is the difference.

Perhaps I misunderstood. 'Prior' is the usual jargon. Then prior to what? My claim is that the analysis of X cannot be prior to X, where X is something in the world as experienced, in this case, a reflection in thought on actions and a judgement thereon, aka 'ethics'. — unenlightened

Thoughts on actions and judgments: A judgment, as with, Raskolnikov is guilty of murder! But what is there in murder that makes this judgment ethical at all? Murder is "something in the world," as you call it; yet as it stands it is underdetermined for a discussion that the OP begins with Hamlet's "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Really? Putting aside Hamlet's ruse, it is a question of the ground of ethics. Good and bad actions beg just this question: What does it mean for something to be good or bad that is non question begging.

Calling an action good doesn't settle the matte as to what it is for something to be good.

Consider the proposition, "Falsehood is better than truth."
If it were true, then it would be better to believe that truth is better than falsehood.
If it were false, then it would be better to believe that truth is better than falsehood.
'Therefore, 'truth is better than falsehood' is the only tenable moral position on truth. — unenlightened

You mean truth as a logical function in a sentence. Do you think ethics hangs by such a thing?

Your solution here would appear to avoid infinite regress. As a general rule do you find infinite regress problematic?

But science cannot be about absolutes because there is nothing in the discovery that cannot be second guessed and this is true because, at its most basic level, it is a language construction and ALL that language produces can be second guessed--

Right. Plato attributes this open endedness to reason itself, and in a way, G.E. Moore seems to have merely it on this vis-á-vis practical reason with the "Open Question" argument. D.C. Schindler and Robert Wallace's books on Plato are quite good on this point. It is this open endedness that gives reason authority to lead, because it can always bring us beyond our own finitude—beyond current belief and desire.

this is the nature of contingency itself: One spoken thing has its meaning only in context. One would have to reach out of contextuality itself to posit an absolute, and this is absurd

Well, objection works with the early analytic notion of the "absolute ' which was bound up with their conception of "abstract objects " and the notion that "objectivity approaches truth at the limit." It comes out of a certain view of naturalism where the perspective of consciousness is a sort of barrier to be overcome, the much maligned but often reproduced "view from nowhere." However, such a consideration of the "absolute" has probably had a longer life as a punching bag for continentals than it did as a position that was actually embraced by large numbers of philosophers.

I would think though that to be properly absolute, in the sense the term is normally used outside that context, is not to be "a reality as set over and against (and outside) all appearances," but rather to include all of reality and appearance. Appearances are really appearances, and so they cannot fall outside the absolute. Hegel's Absolute does not exclude any of its "moments" for instance.

It's like how in the Republic Socrates wants to show Glaucon that Justice is both desirable for itself and on account of something else (both relative and intrinsic, and so not "outside" the relative). Likewise, the Good is not on the Divided Line. It cannot simply be the furthest most point on the line, but encompasses the whole, which is also why the philosopher king must descend back down into the cave for the whole, and why Socrates must at this point "break into" his own story from without, to refer us to the historical Socrates (the "saint") who is wholly outside the confines of the dramatic narrative. I forget who said it, but it's a great quote; "at the center of the Republic sits a life, not an argument."

The absolute need not require a view from nowhere, however. Socrates need not step outside his own humanity to know that "all men are mortal." Similarly, the claim that Socrates can only know that he is mortal within a specific language game itself presupposes a specific metaphysics of language and truth. Likewise, to claim that nothing is immutable is to seemingly make an immutable claim. Some things do not seem subject to revision though. One need not step outside history (or language) to point out that it will never be true that "Adolf Hitler was the first President of the United States." Donald Trump will never become the inventor of the telephone. Dogs will not become cats without ceasing to be dogs.

This is relevant as far as grounding the human good in human nature goes. Sometimes, one sees the claim that: “there is no such thing as human nature.” Prima facie, such a claim cannot be anything but farcical if it is not walked back with so many caveats so as to simply reintroduce the idea of a nature in some modified form. It is clear that man is a certain sort of thing. We do not expect that our children might some day soon spin themselves into cocoons and emerge weeks later with wings, because this is not the sort of thing man does. We know that we will fall if we leap off a precipice, and we understand that we are at no risk of floating away into the sky when we step outdoors. Things possess stable natures; what they are determines how they interact with everything else. Beans do not sprout by being watered in kerosene and being set ablaze, nor can cats live on a diet of rocks. Attempts to wholly remove any notion of “human nature” invariably get walked back with notions like "facticity," “modes of being,” etc. (Generally, the original idea of a "nature" is presented as a sort of straw man in these cases).

Hence, when it comes to ethics, a blanket denial of “human nature” will not do. It is not the case that children benefit as much from healthy, regular meals as from having mercury dumped into their water. While the political theory underlying today’s hegemonic ideology, neoliberalism, might sometimes attempt to consider man as an essenceless, abstract, “choosing agent,” it can never truly commit to this in practice. In terms of actual praxis, no theory can wholly elevate a procedural right over all notions of the human good. We recognize that people need access to certain things to thrive and to become self-governing “agents” in the first place. One cannot have a republic of infants, or the severely brain damaged.

What does it mean for something to be good or bad that is non question begging. — Constance

If someone offers you your favorite meal to eat and a rancid, rotting fish, is it difficult to decide which option is better? Or is it hard to choose between being awarded $5,000 and having to stick your hand in a blender?

Well, at least the appearance of goodness seems obvious. Rational, ends-directed thought would be incoherent without it. Denying goodness, as an appearance, seems on par with denying one's own consciousness and reason itself (not that naturalism and empiricism haven't driven some to just this!).

Ethics and politics come in because it is also apparent that what appears good to us is not always what is actually best. The ubiquitous phenomena of regret, sometimes immediate, is enough to ground this conclusion I would think. Ethics and politics then, are there to explore what is truly desirable, and not merely apparently desirable, or what is said to be desirable by others. The "good," on this view is "that towards which all things aim," (Nicomachean Ethics, Book I) when considered from the perspective of ends, and from a higher level it is "being qua desirable."

Just as to say "a man is on the hill," is the same as to say "one man is on the hill," so it is the same to say "a man is on the hill" and "it is true that a man is on the hill" (assuming assertoric force, which is implied in most contexts). "One" and "true" aren't adding anything to being here. The being of "a duck" is that of "one true duck." So too, "good" doesn't add to being, but is being under a certain conceptual (not real) distinction. That's the core of the Doctrine of Transcendental in a nutshell (and how this got mixed into "goodness is something that sits outside the world" is beyond me, since folks like Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas clearly think goodness is absolutely everywhere).

The appetites of a man are not the appetites of a bee or a sheep. There is contextuality here. Likewise, what a man thinks will must fulfill his desires is not equivalent with what will do so. Ethics and politics want to uncover what truly fulfills desire, so that we can "live a good life," "be good people," etc.

It sounds like you're asking what normativity most fundamentally is? And you sound like a structuralist. You're looking for a answer that explains all the disparate pieces, like the two-dimensional people building a theory from watching a spoon pass through their plane. All they see is a dot that turns into a line, and back to a dot. What is it?

I read a book by a structuralist who focused on gnostic myths. The typical myth goes like this:

In heaven, all was silent because nothing is undone in heaven. Then, out of the silence came the first question: what is this?. God turned to the questioner and said: "Silence yourself. There are no unanswered questions in heaven." The questioner understood and complied, but something about this event caused a part of the questioner to fall out of heaven, and this part is known as Sophia. In time, Sophia gave birth to a blind god named Samael. Samael's body is our universe, but everything that happened in Samael took place in blindness. There was murder and violence, but it didn't mean anything. It was like a play with no audience.

Sophia felt sad when she looked at her son, who couldn't see her. So she whispered into his ear and what she said pervaded his body and coalesced in humans. Humans awoke and began to see their world for the first time. They felt guilt and shame. They had become their own audience. And they turned to see beyond their world, to heaven, where all questions are answered.

For a structuralist, a story like this could be about something that is always happening in the present, maybe below the surface.

↪Joshs Your solution here would appear to avoid infinite regress. As a general rule do you find infinite regress problematic? — Tom Storm

Not so much problematic as illusory. When we stand between two mirrors facing each other, this seems a good exemplar of pure self-repetition. But we tend to miss the way that repetition sneaks in alteration, if not in the objects then in how they strike us. We think what we want from science is pure repeatability as the same, but what we really are looking for is relevance.

... so it would never be good to eliminate good, and thus have complete non-existence.
Well, I think "complete non-existence" (i.e. nothing-ness) is impossible ... and who said anything about "eliminating" existence? Non-existence is an ideal state of maximal non-suffering in contrast to existence (of sufferers) itself. — 180 Proof

The only way to reason to come necessary baseline of an objective good (if it exists) is take the ultimate question of "should there be any existence at all vs nothing" and find what must be the answer. If an objective good exists, logically the answer must be yes. That was the original paper if you want to dive into it again.

Good by definition is what should exist ...
I don't see any reason to accept this "definition". "Should exist" implies a contradiction from the negation of a state of affairs, yet I cannot think of such an actual/non-abstract negation. — 180 Proof

When faced with a competing possible state of existence, what is good is the one that 'should be'. Without any means to quantify good this of course becomes an impossible comparison in many situations, and it may very well be that several competing states of existence would be just as good as another with this definition and evaluation. The original paper attempt was to see if a base good that could be established and built on from there. In such a way I could actually quantify that some states of existence were better than others, and build that up to see how that also applies to human morality.

A more apt, concrete use for "good" is to indicate that which prevents, reduces or eliminates harm (i.e. suffering or injustice). — 180 Proof

So what you're saying is the definition of good 'should be' something different? :)

I agree that what 'should be' is a state of existence where the least unnecessary harm and suffering occurs. The difference is the paper I wrote tried to prove it as objectively true, not a subjective assertion. To do that, it requires a base proof of good to build off of, and I believe using the definition of good as 'should be' fits within our general cultural understanding of good, and can be 'proven' by abducto ad absurdum (IF there is an objective morality). As I see no better competing proposal of good which can be defined as necessary within any objective moral system, I don't see a better alternative at this time.

... objectively true, not a subjective assertion. — Philosophim

I've argued that my usage is objectively true.

e.g.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/540198

Good is saving and improving lives. Evil is deliberate harm and the murder of sentient beings. How do you define good and evil?
— Truth Seeker

I wait until the argument settles. What good is saving lives? Saving a life is one thing--there, you saved me from injury, but there is nothing in the term "saving" that has any ethicality to it. I can save this cup of coffee from being tossed down the drain. And life? what is it about life that makes it part of a moral conversation? — Constance

It’s true that “saving” by itself isn’t always ethical — saving a cup of coffee from being spilt doesn’t have moral weight. But when we talk about saving and improving lives, the ethical significance comes from the fact that sentient beings can experience suffering and well-being.

A cup of coffee has no capacity for suffering, but a sentient being does. That’s why saving a life (human and nonhuman) carries moral weight: it preserves the possibility of future experiences, prevents suffering, and maintains the capacity for joy, connection, and flourishing.

So for me:

Good = actions that prevent or reduce suffering and promote well-being for sentient beings.
Evil = deliberate actions that cause unnecessary suffering or destroy the capacity for well-being in sentient beings.

Life matters morally not just because it exists, but because it is the vessel of sentience — the ability to feel, to suffer, to love, to flourish. Without life, those possibilities vanish.

Certainly. Existence is good, and it can be measured by actual and potential over time. Morality in human terms is simply an expression of morality that that exists though all existence. At a very basic level, imagine if there were sheep and no wolves. Eventually the sheep would multiply, eat all the grass, then die out. But if there are wolves and sheep, the wolves make sure the sheep don't get out of hand. So instead of sheep alone living 100 years then dying out, you create a cycle that allows sheep and wolves to live for hundreds of years. — Philosophim

Existence is good? I am reminded of Voltaire's Candide, or my favorite, Monty Python's version: Chapter one: I Am Eaten by Sharks. You are going to need some kind of theodicy to make this claim stick. I imagine being eaten alive to be the very opposite of a good existence.

But what would this theodicy be? Forget about God; rather, just allow the world to show itself: the good is as it shows itself, and vivisection by shark's teeth is clearly bad. My view is that ethics is real, more real than anything else (which I am willing go into). But first, what is your view on this?

Calling an action good doesn't settle the matte as to what it is for something to be good. — Constance

No, but it is the necessary first step. One cannot even ask the question as to what it is for something to be good, until someone has called something good.

"What is it for something to be doog?" We have no theory; it is not discussed; there is no controversy. If a few people started calling stuff 'doog', we might start to wonder, whether they were talking about something real, like some of us wondered for a short while a long time ago if there was something real or objective about 'groovy'.

Existence is good? — Constance

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15203/in-any-objective-morality-existence-is-inherently-good/p1

The above is the full argument so you can understand where I'm coming from.

I've argued that my usage is objectively true. — 180 Proof

Oh, fantastic! I'll have to read it and reply later.

"Good", like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, that is, it is a subjective (and relative) descriptor. It can mean many and different things.

This reminds me of a religious "parable" or metaphor or, something.

"The Long Spoons".

Six people are chained to a chair that is also chained to the floor and basically unable to move. Or wait, some demon made it so everything is like 5 times longer than it has to be, or something. Anyway everybody has long spoons for some reason and that's all they can use to eat and so if they try to feed themselves, they will fail to lift the food into their mouths, and thus starve. But! If they feed each other, every not only lives but thrives.

So, all that business aside. As the above poster reminds us, we have to pick a side, per se. Is it "right" that humanity lives? Would it be better to for us all to die, by any way possible? Should we all just randomly run to the largest most destructive weapon we can access and kill as many people as possible? No. At least, probably not. Most of society would consider this psychotic, homicidal, and "wrong".

And that's an opinion, perhaps. But it's what we agree upon. So therefore, life is good, and that which facilitates life is good. Anyone who has access to a cliff, or body of water, or even knife who chooses not to end their life, essentially agrees with such and thus this concept remains their established baseline of "good" and "right", contrary to the above post by @LuckyR. Well, not contrary, just, simply put, terms are stipulated and therefore we have a solid, immovable and more or less absolute foundation to work with. Anyone who doesn't agree, would logically not be alive at this point, so, anything from that school of thought or ideological persuasion can effectively be dismissed for all intents and purposes going forward.

So all empirical facts are subjective and relative. One could say with Michel Henry that they are the product of ecstasis, the securing of experience by relation to other experience. Does one need then to ground experience in some ethical substance absolutely immanent to itself to put a stop to this apparent infinite regress? That would be the case if one considered the only choice to be a binary opposing pure self-affecting immanence and alienating , mediating reflection. But there is another option: an ecstasis whose repeating act of self-difference is always original , fecund and productive rather than derivative and secondary to an immanent self-affecting ground.. This ecstasis is already a language prior to the emergence of verbal speech, the social within nature , inseparably nature/culture. Pain, angst, desire, attunement, feeling are the very core of ecstasis as self-displacement and self-transcendence. — Joshs

Ethical substance? I consider the good and the bad of ethics to be analytic terms, abstractions from an original unity. Plainly put, there is no good or bad "outside" of the manifestness of being punched, flogged, burned, loved, delighted, aesthetically immersed, and so on, that we can talk about. This manifestness IS. I argue that the good and the bad are dimensions of our existence, not platonic forms or substance. Reduction to the essence of reason, for Kant, was a deduction to transcendental purity. This doesn't mean there IS such a thing as pure concepts. "Pure" is just a categorical term. So is "the good" and "the bad'.

The need to stop the regress at a terminal point ? But there is no regress in phenomenality. The question is then, in the reduced phenomenon, what is there that is there? Presence as such is nothing, a reduction to nothing, but this is not one what faces. One always already "cares" in some attunement, but what IS it one cares about? Here the reduction goes to the meaning of one's existence, the value of value, as the early Wittgenstein put it. I think he was saying that value cannot be categorized. I think it can be and should be, for this opens being's possiblities. Heidegger's truth as alethea I would argue, opens metaphysics, allowing meaning, banned by positivists, to flood into realization.

An ecstasis whose repeating act of self-difference is always original: In my thinking, ethics and its metaethics insists on a foundation. I am aware that I just said "substance" was out of play. I would use something like value-in-being. How does it insist? The answer to this question lies outside philosophy. Does suffering insist on redemption (in a nontheological sense of this term, a sense that is underlies and grounds theology)? Yes.

Does this mean a field mouse's suffering is redeemed? Maybe, yes, no... But this is the voice of aporia, the doubt that reduces everything to an apophatic wandering. In phenomenology, I claim, there is a suspension of doubt that contravenes phenomenality. This suspension is the reduction.

There is Kierkegaard's Repetition in your alternative (and I would say Deleuze, but the last time I tried reading Difference and Repetition I had to give it up. I cannot yet get into his mind. One day...). Kierkegaard thought Repetition was about the hic et nunc where religious affirmation had its basis in everyday living. You would have it conceived outside of any religious thinking. Can this be done without violating the phenomenon, the appearing as such? I think it cannot.

This is the best I can do thus far with these ideas.

What is right depends on your alignment, good or evil. Humans have evolved socially and physiologically over the Ages. Human nature is good; by good, I mean humans prefer pleasure over pain. The social laws that everybody is talking about are the result of the social and physiological evolution, which is, of course, biased by human nature.

What is right depends on your alignment, good or evil. Humans have evolved socially and physiologically over the Ages. Human nature is good; by good, I mean humans prefer pleasure over pain. The social laws that everybody is talking about are the result of the social and physiological evolution, which is, of course, biased by human nature. — MoK

How do you define good and evil?

How do you define good and evil? — Truth Seeker

I already defined good in my post. Evil is the opposite.

I already defined good in my post. Evil is the opposite. — MoK

Human nature is good; by good, I mean humans prefer pleasure over pain. — MoK

Humans do evil things, such as murder other humans and other organisms. If human nature is good, why do they do evil things?

Humans do evil things, such as murder other humans and other organisms. If human nature is good, why do they do evil things? — Truth Seeker

Human nature is not perfectly good. You can find evil people as well, such as sadists, rapists, etc.