What is the good?

_db

There has been a lot of recent debate on here about meta-ethics and I think a lot of the controversy has to do with different views on what constitutes the "good". Indeed there has been innumerable differing opinions in the past on this very topic.

In any case, my purpose here is not to give an account of all these positions but to offer my own and extend the opportunity for others to share their perspectives on this.

Humans are value-machines. It's true, we literally create value. Like Hume said, minds have a tendency to project properties onto objects that are not actually there objectively. Whatever is valuable is thus perceived to be valuable; value is, therefore, a mind-dependent property in the same way the color blue is a mind-dependent property that only seems to adhere to the object it is associated with.

Indeed it is hard to see how value could possibly exist outside of minds. What is value, if not what determines what is good and bad, and what determines good and bad, if not our own judgements of things?

And the fact is that morality, as it is usually conceived, deals with the relationship between things that can feel. Telling someone that the color green is morally good would come across as absurd - there is nothing about the color green that makes it morally good. Claiming that morality ought to be founded around the color green is therefore a bastardization of the very concept of morality.

But perhaps the color green has helped us immeasurably by dictating when automobiles can begin to accelerate in an intersection. However, this does not make the color green moral - it merely makes it an instrument for furthering our own goals, such as not getting into accidents. So when someone says that we ought to use the color green in our society because green in good, they are really saying that we have certain goals in mind that the color green satisfies.

Regardless, we have seemingly moral intuitions that are not self-interested. We might get involved in a risky situation, not because we want to be a hero, but because we feel compelled to do so. We care for whoever is in danger and would feel guilt for not getting involved. All of this should be fairly obvious.

Yet we can deconstruct these intuitions to show their inherent social and evolutionary history. We can see how the intuition to help a family member over a neighbor evolved from close-quarter kinship. And it is at this critical point that we face a disillusionment - although we feel compelled to help our family before our neighbors, we have a hard time finding a current reason to do so. As soon as the veil is lifted, our values begin to slip away.

My claim, though, is that we cannot let these intuitions slip, at least not all of them or all the way. And so we find a justification for these intuitions, by appeal to the most basic value experience: pleasure and pain. It is undeniable that pleasure and pain is good and bad for me, so why shouldn't it be good and bad for other people? Thus, in addition to these basic experiences, we utilize the virtue of empathy to understand the circumstances of another person. And although these themselves are a product of society and evolution, we nevertheless can't help but be swayed by them. They are undeniable, and thus a perfect candidate for fulfilling the open-ended question.

But this triad is not to be compared to other, more arbitrary, intuitions, in virtue of their universality]. We can thus eliminate or refine other intuitions by appealing to these fundamental, "foundational" intuitions. It is because of their universality that these intuitions have remained intact, and it is because other intuitions are not universal (rather, dependent) that they are apt to be altered or rejected. Our intuitions are extremely contradictory and utilizing universal intuitions allows us to make sense of things better.

And so this triad - pleasure, pain, and empathy - results in a wide variety of other virtues that we uphold, even if we originally had not held them because of this triad. If we can find a way to integrate these other beliefs with this triad, then they can stay. Thus, we have concepts like equality, liberty, and property because they have passed this coherence test, while other concepts like tribalism, domination, and inequality have not passed and so thus are rejected.

From this, a system of value can be set up. Consequentialists get a lot of flak for having systems that go against our intuitions - yet it is precisely these intuitions that I have already rejected as being second-order and unsubstantial in comparison to the triad. It is because of this that any constraint imposed upon morality that conflicts with this triad is an attempt to superimpose particularity on universality, when the reason we have these universal beliefs is because they are indeed universal and thus form the background for these particular beliefs.

And as soon as we have a system of universals set up, we can dispense with any appeals to these second-order intuitions. It may be hard, or perhaps even impossible to. We may feel that it is wrong to kill a person just because - but this contradicts this universal triad that we already have in place.

Wayfarer

And so this triad - pleasure, pain, and empathy - results in a wide variety of other virtues that we uphold, even if we originally had not held them because of this triad — DarthBarracuda

There is a 'triad' in traditional Buddhism, namely that of craving, hatred and stupidity, which are the 'three poisons' that drive the wheel of samsara. So pleasure is an aspect of craving, and pain is an aspect of hatred. But the third element is indifference or stupidity, so it doesn't map completely against your schema.

The 'three poisions' are represented iconographically as the pig, snake, and chicken, forever chasing each other in a circle, in the centre of the wheel of life:

In Buddhist ethical theory, by the practice of sila-samadhi- prajñā (morality, concentration and wisdom), craving is transformed into renunciation, hatred into empathy, and stupidity into wisdom, so as to realise the 'true good' of liberation.

Terrapin Station

↪darthbarracuda

You start off well enough, but you go increasingly off the rails during the course of that post. The biggest problem is with your belief that there are universal moral "intuitions." There aren't. Although there are certainly moral intuitions that are far more common than others.

wuliheron

What we call conscious thought and unconscious intuition is merely a question of context. Socrates said knowledge is the only good and, I would add, ignorance is the only evil. Know thyself for habits are end of honesty and compassion, the beginning of total confusion. Meta-ethics without self-knowledge are merely mortality by another name.

aporiap

↪darthbarracuda

My claim, though, is that we cannot let these intuitions slip, at least not all of them or all the way. And so we find a justification for these intuitions, by appeal to the most basic value experience: pleasure and pain. It is undeniable that pleasure and pain is good and bad for me, so why shouldn't it be good and bad for other people? Thus, in addition to these basic experiences, we utilize the virtue of empathy to understand the circumstances of another person. And although these themselves are a product of society and evolution, we nevertheless can't help but be swayed by them. They are undeniable, and thus a perfect candidate for fulfilling the open-ended question.

There seems to be a jump here. It's clear that pleasure is pleasurable and pain is painful but what makes that good or bad for me? Would you say this presupposes goodness equates with what's pleasurable? And there are issues here -- what's pleasurable isn't always good and what's good isn't always pleasurable. Arguably I'd be having something in mind about the good when I make that statement but it's no different than adding value judgements on top of other value judgements (e.g. something pleasurable is something good. and something painful is something bad). Also, feelings are complex and can be parsed in more fine-grained ways than just simply pleasure and pain. I'd say there are many kinds of feelings that can be considered pleasurable (e.g. feelings felt while reading an engaging book, making love, laughing with friends) but they are distinct from each other and distinct from the sense of good and bad.

I do like this idea of innate, universal intuitions being the guiding force for an ethical theory. But I think there are moral intuitions distinct from our pleasure/pain judgements.

apokrisis

what's pleasurable isn't always good and what's good isn't always pleasurable. — aporiap

Well put. The "good" is never going to be found so simply in personal feelings. Otherwise chocolate and beer would be the highest good. :)

I do like this idea of innate, universal intuitions being the guiding force for an ethical theory. But I think there are moral intuitions distinct from our pleasure/pain judgements. — aporiap

It makes sense that we are biologically evolved to value the world in ways that work. And pleasure, pain and empathy are all biologically evolved "intuitions" in that regard.

But the example of chocolate and sugar illustrates the fact that moral judgements have to be complex. What's good in the short-term as instant gratification of an impulse may be very bad as a long-term habit.

And humans bring on this particular moral dilemma for themselves. It is because we are smart enough to refine food that we can produce all the sugar and alcohol we like. The "intuitive" responses we might have due to a lengthy evolutionary history become mal-adaptive after we have removed the constraints on our ability to satisfy our urges.

If we were thinking morally, we would have to identify then what is actually "the good" that nature had in mind originally, and how we can then re-introduce the constraints so as to arrive back at that "better" balance.

So as you say, what is pleasurable ain't always reliably good. And it becomes a cruel kind of empathy to share your sugar and alcohol with your children or pets.

But we can - by taking this naturalistic approach - start to see how "the good" was defined for us through historical evolutionary forces. Pleasure, pain and empathy all existed as intuitive evaluations of something. And that something is mostly the obvious thing of meeting the goals of life - ie: to grow, to reproduce, to flourish.

schopenhauer1

If we were thinking morally, we would have to identify then what is actually "the good" that nature had in mind originally, and how we can then re-introduce the constraints so as to arrive back at that "better" balance. — apokrisis

Here's the naturalistic fallacy again..And what is balance? Survival? Why is that most paramount? It's simply a self-fulfilling argument. Clearly, you are trying to make us like animals who simply "do" without self-awareness.. Once self-awareness becomes involved, we no longer "have" to do anything, whether that be re-introducing restraint or moving towards a "better" balance... These all become hypothetical imperatives.. prescriptions for this or that lifestyle, but none of them are justified in and of themselves, only suggestions for living this or that lifestyle.. But if that is the case it is not ethical simply a lifestyle choice.

apokrisis

Here's the naturalistic fallacy again — schopenhauer1

You remain confused about this. It is Darth who is advancing the naturalistic fallacy here in suggesting that pleasure, pain and empathy are natural properties the good (and bad).

In philosophical ethics, the term "naturalistic fallacy" was introduced by British philosopher G. E. Moore in his 1903 book Principia Ethica.[1] Moore argues it would be fallacious to explain that which is good reductively in terms of natural properties such as "pleasant" or "desirable".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy

Of course Moore wanted to argue for some ineffable notion of the good. And so he was wrongly focused on a particular kind of metaphysical notion of what even "is". His argument was against qualia - pleasure, pain and empathy regarded as objects of experience.

My naturalism is physicalist (with its semiotic twist) and so it has quite a different metaphysical basis.

For me, what "is" is material. And what "ought" is thus some empirical observation about the necessities of material self-organisation. I am not a closet dualist like Darth and so the "ought" part only needs to have the ontological status of historical inevitability.

I don't claim a transcendentally absolute existence for "the good". Therefore I don't have to justify a strong distinction between is and ought. They become merely the same system observed over different spatiotemporal scales.

In the short-term, everything is what it is, even if it is disorganised and chaotic. In the long-term, what that everything is, is then what it "ought" to be in the sense that by definition it must have struck on the fruitful balance that enables its own long-term persistence.

So do you see the difference yet?

If you presume a metaphysics based on substantial existence with external causes (like a world of material action ruled by some transcendent principle), then is~ought is automatically a naturalistic fallacy. It simply restates the assumption that the rightful cause of a material action - its finality - comes from "outside" the world. By ontic definition, it doesn't come immanently from within.

But my metaphysics is a process ontology based on immanent causality. Finality must arise within the system - to the degree that any final cause exists. That is why I keep pointing you at the laws of thermodynamics. That is what finality looks like in the real material world to the best of our scientific knowledge.

And so now - by definition - there is no problem with ought arising as the historical inevitability that is immanent self-organisation. It can't be a natural fallacy as the oughtness is built in, not hived off as some mysterious further transcendental principle - the desires of a creating god or the abstract objects of a Platonic realm.

Once self-awareness becomes involved, we no longer "have" to do anything, whether that be re-introducing restraint or moving towards a "better" balance... These all become hypothetical imperatives.. prescriptions for this or that lifestyle, but none of them are justified in and of themselves, only suggestions for living this or that lifestyle. — schopenhauer1

Unfortunately you give humans too much credit for self aware insight.

No one would get morbidly obese or a hopeless alcoholic if they could freely make well-informed choices. Most folk in fact struggle to help themselves - fight their evolved urges. And then our societies build in those bad choices for some reason - selling sugar by the bag, alcohol on every street corner.

So that is why we need morality that works. We have a real problem in being natural creatures in a world where we have got good at removing natural constraints.

And you are not going to fix that problem with a faulty philosophical model of morality.

schopenhauer1

↪apokrisis

You try so hard to do somersaults around the naturalistic fallacy but you commit it quite squarely here:

For me, what "is" is material. And what "ought" is thus some empirical observation about the necessities of material self-organisation. — apokrisis

They become merely the same system observed over different spatiotemporal scales. — apokrisis

In the long-term, what that everything is, is then what it "ought" to be in the sense that by definition it must have struck on the fruitful balance that enables its own long-term persistence. — apokrisis

This to me amounts to a naturalistic fallacy. You are taking empirical observation of what "is" and saying this is what we "should" be aiming for. Why? It indeed is what the system might be aiming for, but that is purely descriptive and thus not even in the realm of ethics only what is going on. Does this provide an impetus for ethical action? No? Others have brought this up to you in other threads and yet you have no answer. It is simply hypothetical imperatives. As long as you admit it as not being ethical but rather simply judging what YOUR interpretation of the results of are.. then fine.. You interpret the system/process to be "X" in the long term, and thus that has been our projected aim..So you made a prediction from a model of what we have been doing, but no imperative other than suggestions for this or that. No one has to survive for this or that reason.. no one has to reduce entropy for this or that reason... no one has to....

Unfortunately you give humans too much credit for self aware insight.

No one would get morbidly obese or a hopeless alcoholic if they could freely make well-informed choices. Most folk in fact struggle to help themselves - fight their evolved urges. And then our societies build in those bad choices for some reason - selling sugar by the bag, alcohol on every street corner.

So that is why we need morality that works. We have a real problem in being natural creatures in a world where we have got good at removing natural constraints.

And you are not going to fix that problem with a faulty philosophical model of morality. — apokrisis

I guess to clarify what I was trying to say is that humans are not fixed instinctually to follow any balance. This is unlike other animals who naturally find a balance because they more or less go by instinct which becomes a default way for the organism to continue living. Humans do not "need" to find a balance because we are not necessarily fixed. We can choose a number of options including suicide. There is no need for balance seeking we have no reason to want to balance (whatever that is). Again, that would be a naturalistic fallacy. Just because we generally continue to survive does not mean we have to.. Just because the aim of the universe is entropy does not mean we have to slow our local entropy.

Your hidden assumptions are that this and that ethical guidelines are good and thus we must follow that... and thus you are being that pesky Platonist you resent.

Your ethical assumptions.. "Me like survival...survival good.." "I learn good ways for survival...this one-issue policy to stop global warming" "we follow that..everyone good".. "me ethical prophet intuiting what is good" "me Tarzan :)"

apokrisis

You are taking empirical observation of what "is" and saying this is what we "should" be aiming for. — schopenhauer1

Or rather I am saying there is what is. And it has its reasons. And that frames our choices. We can either go with nature's flow or - for some reason - decide to swim against its tide.

So the difference consists in actually knowing the purposes of nature and thus being able to make some conscious choice.

Although why you would want to live your life in a way that is naturally dysfunctional is a mystery to me.

I guess to clarify what I was trying to say is that humans are not fixed instinctually to follow any balance. — schopenhauer1

This is simply to ignore the science to the contrary.

Your ethical assumptions.. "Me like survival...survival good.." "I learn good ways for survival...this one-issue policy to stop global warming" "we follow that..everyone good".. "me ethical prophet intuiting what is good" "me Tarzan :)" — schopenhauer1

Isn't this rather specieist if not racist? Or maybe you think it's witty?

Michael

So the difference consists in actually knowing the purposes of nature and thus being able to make some conscious choice. — apokrisis

I think "purpose" is the wrong word to use here. It suggests intention, which nature doesn't have (unless you count us wanting things as nature having intentions, or unless you're arguing for panpsychism).

I am not a closet dualist like Darth and so the "ought" part only needs to have the ontological status of historical inevitability.

So you're not using "ought" in a normative sense but in a predictive sense, akin to "the ball ought to fall if you drop it"? If so, I wonder if considering this as relevant to the notion of "good" is a case of equivocation.

apokrisis

I think "purpose" is the wrong word to use here. It suggests intention, which nature doesn't have (unless you count us wanting things as nature having intentions, or unless you're arguing for panpsychism). — Michael

Natural philosophy is about taking finality seriously, but in ways that are suitably deflationary.

So finality is seen in nested hierarchical fashion as {propensities {functions {purposes}}}. Or to use systems jargon, {teleomaty {teleonomy {teleology}}}.

Things with brains thus can have purposes, conscious intentions, teleological plans. But at the other end of the spectrum, even the physico-chemical realm has propensities or teleomatic tendencies.

And no, this leads not to pan-psychism but to pan-semiosis. It is a claim about a material world organised by the "immateriality" of a system of signs.

Michael

Natural philosophy is about taking finality seriously, but in ways that are suitably deflationary.

So finality is seen in nested hierarchical fashion as {propensities {functions {purposes}}}. Or to use systems jargon, {teleomaty {teleonomy {teleology}}}.

Things with brains thus can have purposes, conscious intentions, teleological plans. But at the other end of the spectrum, even the physico-chemical realm has propensities or teleomatic tendencies. — apokrisis

So a better phrasing of your claim would be: "the difference consists in actually knowing the propensities of nature and thus being able to make some conscious choice"?

I'm just not sure how understanding natural propensities relates to normative rules of behaviour. Surely the former is only relevant if it helps us determine how best to achieve some desired end? It certainly can't tell us which desired ends are good, can it?

unenlightened

I suggest that 'the good' a relational term. Like 'proximity'. It would be a mistake to look for a property of proximity either in oneself or in certain objects, or events. It would also be a mistake to think that proximity is not real.

apokrisis

I'm just not sure how understanding natural propensities relates to normative rules of behaviour. Surely the former is only relevant if it helps us determine how best to achieve some desired end? It certainly can't tell us which desired ends are good, can it? — Michael

If the most general propensity of nature is to entopify, then we can consciously consider our moral precepts in that light.

If your notion of "the good" has to be then modified to get passed its traditional transcendent presumptions, or even completely abandoned as a useful term, then great.

apokrisis

↪unenlightened

It is easy to see what proximity relates. So what does the good relate?

Michael

If the most general propensity of nature is to entopify, then we can consciously consider our moral precepts in that light — apokrisis

I don't really see how. It's a natural propensity for a ball on a hill to roll down it. I don't think that tells us anything about moral behaviour. So how does knowing that an isolated system's entropy never decreases tell us something about moral behaviour?

If your notion of "the good" has to be then modified to get passed its traditional transcendent presumptions, or even completely abandoned as a useful term, then great.

I think it's less a case of modifying the notion of the good but a case of dismissing it and then reappropriating the word "good". Which means that this new notion has nothing relevant to do with the old notion. It's like if I was to reappropriate the word "God" and use it as a title to refer to some monarch but think that I'm saying something about theism.

apokrisis

↪Michael

When you follow the story of thermodynamics through to the level of complexity represented by a social system, you can see that its fundamental dissipative dynamic can best be described in terms of competition and cooperation. And thus you can see why a basic moral precept, like "do unto others as you would have them do unto you", makes natural sense. It encodes a natural organising balance.

Metaphysician Undercover

I think "purpose" is the wrong word to use here. It suggests intention, which nature doesn't have (unless you count us wanting things as nature having intentions, or unless you're arguing for panpsychism). — Michael

This is a problem. If intention is not something natural then it must transcend nature. This makes the good, as the thing which is intended, into some sort of transcendent object, the objective. That's what Plato found "the good" is an ideal which transcends the intelligible world. However, the difficult part is that "the good" as the objective, has real causal influence within the natural world, and the understanding of this manifested in the concept of free will.

Michael

This is a problem. If intention is not something natural then it must transcend nature. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think you're reading too much into it. When I say that nature doesn't have intentions I'm not saying that human intention is non-natural. I'm just saying, for example, that evolution (or entropy) isn't an intentional activity that the world-at-large engages in. It's just something that happens given the laws of physics.

unenlightened

↪apokrisis

Well dung is good for dung beetles and rose growers, affection is good for humans.

Terrapin Station

The "good" is never going to be found so simply in personal feelings. — apokrisis

The good can't be found anywhere else. It's just that people aren't so simple that they don't have conflicting goals/feelings.

Barry Etheridge

Otherwise chocolate and beer would be the highest good. :) — apokrisis

They aren't? Well that's my life's work down the pan then!

Barry Etheridge

And thus you can see why a basic moral precept, like "do unto others as you would have them do unto you", makes natural sense. — apokrisis

Except that it doesn't. Quite apart from encouraging potentiallty damaging co-dependency even to the point of deviancy (sado-masochism, for example) reciprocity is not a desirable feature in most relationships. A teacher doesn't wish to be taught by his pupils, a parent doesn't seek discipline from offspring, a policeman doesn't wish to be arrested, a soldier certainly does not expect to be killed. It's clear that for most acts of public service then 'do as you would be done by' is a wholly inadequate explanation of motivation for what is in many cases decidedly 'unnatural' behaviour.

Barry Etheridge

affection is good for humans. — unenlightened

Not always!

_db

You remain confused about this. It is Darth who is advancing the naturalistic fallacy here in suggesting that pleasure, pain and empathy are natural properties the good (and bad). — apokrisis

And once again I have to explain to you how I am a moral anti-realist. There is no "Good", there are only goods spread out across a population and abstracted as a "Good" in virtue of the basic triad.

And there are issues here -- what's pleasurable isn't always good and what's good isn't always pleasurable. — aporiap

↪apokrisis

I have to disagree with this here. What is pleasurable isn't always good, indeed - but only because it conflicts with other people's interests. The pleasure a rapist feels is good for himself, but should not be seen as good in the ethical way. I should have put it in the OP: the triad recognizes pain and suffering as more important than pleasure: indeed it is the case that when you feel compassion for someone, it is because they are suffering. You don't care for someone if they're happy - they are self-sufficient.

And so ethics involves the systematic distribution of care across a population.

Furthermore, to say that there are goods that aren't pleasurable is incoherent. Apo said he recognized pleasure as a mug of beer - but this is a shallow misrepresentation of what pleasure is. There certainly are higher-order, long-term eudaimonic pleasures, that are not just the carnal satisfaction of some brute desire, but what at least seems to be a much more complex goal pursuit - i.e. when Heidegger showed how humans are the only animals on Earth that lead their lives.

But the example of chocolate and sugar illustrates the fact that moral judgements have to be complex. What's good in the short-term as instant gratification of an impulse may be very bad as a long-term habit. — apokrisis

So like I said, the only thing that makes chocolate and sugar a long-time bad habit is that it will diminish the welfare of the individual. That is invariably what ethics is about: person welfare. Any other conception leads the train off the rails.

apokrisis

It's just something that happens given the laws of physics. — Michael

What could be more question begging than saying the material world acts a certain way because it is the law?

apokrisis

Well dung is good for dung beetles and rose growers, affection is good for humans. — unenlightened

So the relating is the relating which promotes growth or flourishing?

apokrisis

Except that it doesn't. Quite apart from encouraging potentiallty damaging co-dependency even to the point of deviancy (sado-masochism, for example) reciprocity is not a desirable feature in most relationships. A teacher doesn't wish to be taught by his pupils, a parent doesn't seek discipline from offspring, a policeman doesn't wish to be arrested, a soldier certainly does not expect to be killed. — Barry Etheridge

The advantage of it being a basic precept is that it can then be developed in more particular fashion. So are your examples all revealing further natural features?

What I would pick out is that they go to the naturalness of developed hierarchies. The balancing of the twin imperatives of competition and cooperation has to be achieved by one becoming dominant in scale, the other submissive, in an organised society.

S+M is a twisted play on that hierarchical social relation. Perhaps it is actually immoral or unnatural when taken to a damaging extreme.

Teaching is naturally organised in hierarchical fashion. One has the wisdom to impart, the other has the need to learn. Same with parents and kids. Or police and crooks.

As to soldiers, I think it is the generals that don't expect to be killed. But soldiers certainly expect the other side to fight.

unenlightened

So the relating is the relating which promotes growth or flourishing? — apokrisis

That's a reasonable generalisation, but it's a bit vague. Dung beetles don't promote the growth or flourishing of dung. I seem to recollect a species of squid that finds a crack somewhere to lay it's eggs and is then consumed by it's children. Presumably that's good for squid in general, but the mother doesn't flourish. But that's ok, proximity has the same ambiguity; Mercury is close to the sun and Q is close to W on my keyboard.

I'd guess that flourishing is another relational term. It is associated with eco-philosophy in my mind, which I suppose fits fairly well with your systems approach. Diversity, stability, resilience, flexibility, I can't really remember the details, but the ecosystem rather than the species, let alone the individual, is the POV that has a significant relation of flourishing or not in relation to a world, according to such views.

Metaphysician Undercover

I think you're reading too much into it. When I say that nature doesn't have intentions I'm not saying that human intention is non-natural. I'm just saying, for example, that evolution (or entropy) isn't an intentional activity that the world-at-large engages in. It's just something that happens given the laws of physics. — Michael

Well it would be quite odd to think of entropy as an intentional act. It seems like the opposite of intentional to me, what happens when intention doesn't intervene. But I wouldn't say the same thing necessarily for evolution. I understand trial and error as intentional activity, and doesn't evolution seem to be a form of trial and error? The reason why trial and error is intentional, is because there has to be some sort of motivation for success, behind the trial. Do you not think that it is likely that there is some similar sort of intention behind the trials of other living organisms?

What is the good?

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Categories

More Discussions