Then why not reference that in the OP? Otherwise, it is simply too vague.

Allen never leaves the shop without Brown (¬A ⇒ ¬B)

This is a poorly translated sentence into logic: the fact that allen never leaves the shop without brown does not imply that brown cannot be in the shop when allen is not there. On the contrary, it just means that when allen was present in the shop and then left (or brown was in the shop when allen was there), one can be sure that brown (or allen) left with him; which can't be expressed accurately without temporal logic. E.g., just because you know that "when my niece is with me in walmart, she will not leave the store without me", it does not follow that "when I am in Walmart, my niece is with me"...that's just bad logic. Even when considering the other axiom (that at least one is there) it does not follow that ¬A ⇒ ¬B from the sentential form of the axiom.

If I grant the logical form which they are translating to (such that is the axiom is actually '¬A ⇒ ¬B'), then it still the case, as I mentioned before, that there is no paradox at all: 'A ⇒ ¬B' and '¬A ⇒ ¬B' are not contradictory. Material implication is such that 'A ⇒ B' is the same as '¬X ∨ Y'.

Am I missing something?

What do you mean? Are you asking if they have the intelligence at par with human beings? Sure. Equal or more.

It is a species that, as per its nature, can only achieve a deep and persistent sense of happiness, flourishing, and well-being by committing egregious acts on other species (e.g., torture, abuse, mass genocide, etc.).

The entirety of this debate revolves around a vague OP:

Do (A implies B) and (A implies notB) contradict each other?

If you are asking:

"Is 'A -> B && A -> !B' a contradiction (i.e., itself contradictory)?"

Then the answer is clearly no. If you are asking:

"Is 'A && A -> B && A -> !B' a contradiction (i.e., itself contradictory)?"

Then the answer is clearly yes.

Everyone is just interpreting the OP's question, because it is too vague, one way or the other.

You are missing the point. Yes, this "devil species" and the some unjust acts that humans have committed will overlap.

And yet you begin with his metaphysical terms "purpose" "telos" "final causes" & "essence". :roll:

Of course. All branches of philosophy are interrelated; but we tend to focus on one or the other for the sake of the conversation. Ethics presupposes metaphysical commitments, no doubt.

Generally, yes. But would it be morally intuitive to say that a social species that maintains their society by torturing another social species as doing something 'good'? That's what is implied by Aristotelian ethics if the social species requires it to fulfill their nature.

That's fair; but I mean a species that inflicts torture, suffering, etc. on other species for the sake of their own well-being; which is generally understood by humans to be immoral. I am not talking about a species that merely kills animals to nourish themselves, or something akin to that.

This OP is about Aristotle's Eudemian and Nichomachean Ethics; not his Metaphysics, Politics, or Physics.

If anything in those books is relevant to the discussion, then please feel free to bring it to my attention. As far as I am aware, Aristotle does not deal with what is good in his Metaphysics (but I could be wrong). I am currently reading the Metaphysics.

With respect to your critique about the conflation of the map with the territory: this critique applies to all philosophies, including your own. We always talk about the territory by way of the map. This doesn't seem to negate the validity of talking about essences. By your reasoning, we are stuck in a cartesian style dualism between the map and the territory such that we cannot know anything about the latter.

I am avoiding using humanity as an example because Aristotle would say our Telos directs us to care about others, but we fall short sometimes.

Sure, people act devilish. This is different from a species whose telos specifically non-being

You are reading the OP too literally: let me clarify. What I meant by “devil species” is what you are calling a “devilish species”. I am talking about a species of which they fulfill their nature necessarily at the expense of other species.

The critique I am making in the OP is an external criticism about how morally counter-intuitive it would be to say that devilish species member is being ‘good’ when they are torturing a human being for their own pleasure. Don’t you agree?

I don't think this makes sense. How does a species survive if its end is sickness over health?

That’s not what is being stipulated in the OP: e.g., it is the “sickeness” of other species for the “health” of the devilish species that I am discussing.

And for any sort of rational schemer, prudence still seems like a virtue. They won't get far doing evil if they act stupidly. Likewise courage will still be preferable to rashness or cowardice. You can't do your evil if you get yourself caught or are too scared to engage in evil acts. Etc.

Agreed. But this by no means entails virtues like kindness, liberality, etc. A devilish species would have no use for those with respect to other life.

A tiger is right to attack and eat people. I don't think the idea of a rational creature oriented wholly towards evil works the same way. Tigers' good is indeed fairly opposed to man as one of man's few natural predators. The good of the Bubonic Plague bacteria might be another example.

Yeah, so this is what I am talking about. You see it as internally coherent with Aristotle’s ethics (and you are right), whereas I agree and merely add that it is morally counter-intuitive to think of the Bubonic Plague as being ‘good’ by fulfilling its nature (of presumably infecting and killing as many people as possible). That seems to scream out: “this ethical theory has problems!”.

Have you read the Metaphysics yet? That's mainly the reason why I don't think this sort of thing is going to make sense from Aristotle's perspective (IIRC Book XII has most of the relevant stuff).

I haven’t, but I will.

Yes, in this context "telos" is fallaciously anthropomorphic (à la animism).

It can be; but I think Aristotle is very clear that Telos is just contingent on an agent’s intentions or purposes for things. Wouldn’t you agree that a member of a species gravitates towards fulfilling what it is to be that species?

Aristotle mistook – literalized / fetishized / reified – his causal mappings for the territory and called them "essences".

Yes, but, then, wouldn’t all of reason, concepts, and the understanding be about the territory? Why can’t we use the map we have to speak of the territory, which could include essences—no?

I think he definitely keeps definitions entirely too vague; but I don't see anything wrong with the concept of an essence or final causes (telos): do you?

It seems like human beings have an essence insofar as they can be subsumed under one shared concept of 'human being'.

How can a being be oriented fundamentally towards non-being?

This is a mischaracterization of evil as privation. No one reputable denies that a person can aim at being unjust, cruel, etc. It happens all the time. Now, with what you are noting is:

Sadism might be another example you have in mind, but the sadist is attracted to causing suffering and destruction because of a sense of power or pleasure(a good), not for its own sake

Which is correct insofar as a person cannot aim at what is bad in the sense of it being done for its own sake; however, it is wrong insofar as the “devil species” I outlined is doing bad things for the sake of their own well-being. So they are doing it for the sake of something good, being that it is in accordance with their nature to gain well-being through the suffering of other species, but must aim at bad things to achieve it. So your counter here seems to miss the mark, don’t you think?

My point is that, the “devil species” would be right to commit unjust acts for the sake of their own well-being, since there is nothing about their nature that relates them to doing just acts, and this would be entailed by Aristotle’s view—wouldn’t it?

But such a thing: a. doesn't exist, b. wouldn't come to exist in the whole order of things.

That’s not the point: the point is that a living being having their status of being ‘good’ relative to fulfilling their nature opens up, in principle, the possibility that what is ‘good’ is for a living being to not care at all about other living beings if their nature is such that they gain the deepest sense of happiness from it. Wouldn’t you agree?

With respect to point B, Aristotle kind of confusingly defines ‘good’ in a two fold manner: what is done for its own sake (i.e., intrinsic valuebleness), and what is excellence for a particular thing. I couldn’t really decipher which definition he holds, and they are not compatible with each other. When you say it can’t exist in nature, what you are referring to, I would guess, is your example of a being geared towards unhealthiness (decadence); which is besides my point (as I already noted).

Correct, but that is irrelevant to the OP.

Good exposition of Aristotle's thoughts; but it doesn't really address the OP: it seems to sidestep it. From what I can gather from your comment, you are not denying that "if a devil species existed and 'good' is defined as ~'excellence at one's nature', then a devil species would be 'good' IFF it is unjust, cruel, etc."; instead, you seem to be saying that God wouldn't allow the devil species to exist. This doesn't contend with the hypothetical, unless I am missing something.

I have no problem with the fact that we can reverse engineer, usually, the intention from the actions; but it does not follow that all the effects of those actions were intentional.

See this comment.

I think no matter which normative ethical view one takes, it will have to hold some set of absolute moral principles as fundamental; however, this does not mean all normative ethical views collapse into deontology: they are useful "modes" of thinking about normative ethics. Wouldn't you agree?

Yes, that is what I am arguing. We ought to associate intentionality with the act itself, which is the means, rather than with the end

Then you are not talking about intentionality as it is commonly and predominantly understood. So we are talking past each other. I am only interested in intentionality as it is largely understood. Your view of intentionality strips out the essence of intention and swaps it for causality; which of no use when we analyze the intentions of someone.

Intention is a cause, and what is caused is action.

The intention is wrapped up, inextricably, with the action; and what is caused is an effect.

we see that intention causes an act

Intention is an act; and does not cause it. The intention is no where to be found in physical causality.

I am using "intentional" to signify something which is cause by an act of intention

What is intentional is what is related to the intention; and the intention is the end which is being aimed at. You can’t implicate someone as intentionally doing something they entirely did not foresee happening just because it resulted from an act of intention towards something else. That makes no sense.

This creates the issue of what exactly does direct the conscious actions which are not consistent with the apprehended good

I don’t understand what you mean by a “conscious act” which is not intentional (in the traditional sense of intentionality); and this seems to be the crux of your argument. If I consciously decide to do X, then I intentionally did X—even if X is the end I am trying to actualize.

But that is undemonstrable and is easily refuted by people who are born with eyes and yet are blind

This is just an example of a thing not fulfilling its end properly; and NOT that it had no end. It is uncontroversially true that the body develops the eyes for seeing all else being equal. When the circumstances impede, then there can be an eye which is developed in an impoverished manner.

For example, we can say that the Sun will be extinct in X years exactly, that is a Telos that we understand, and we can do all the tests we want and that will not prove that it will be extinct in X years

The sun has as its end, albeit not intentional nor intelligently designated, to do exactly what a start does, and the particular one it is. We would say that sun, as per its nature, will eventually become a neutron star or a black hole.

With evolution, it is much clearer and we treat biology as if it has Telos: the doctor determines how healthy your body is by-at-large relative to what it is supposed to be doing and how it is supposed to be developing.

You can say that the telos of life is to reproduce and survive

No, the end is to realize the nature of a human; which does include procreation, family, etc.

There’s a lot more to being a human than reproduction and survival.

Do we say that people who do not want to have children have no life? And people who commit suicide? Thousands of similar examples can be proposed

There’s absolutely no relevance of these statements and our conversation.

The point is that you cannot take as a necessity that which is a possibility.

Aiming at an end, is always to say that the end is not actual nor necessary (per se) and that it is merely a possibility which is attempting to be realized. This objection is just an obvious misunderstanding of what teleology is.

I have no problem with the idea that our intentions are actualized imperfectly; and I don't deny that people can be held responsible for their negligence. So I am not following what you are contending with.

I think we are just disagreeing on what 'intention' is.

Just because something is caused by something done intentionally, it does not follow that that effect was intentional. You are forgetting or omitting that intentionality is about what is being aimed at---not what happens.

If I am aiming with a bow an arrow at a bullseye target, and I miss fire and hit a deer of which I had no clue was somewhere behind the target; then I did not thereby intentionally hit the deer even though it follows from the causal chain which derives back to an intentional action. According to you, it would be intentional.

The point is that Aristotle is setting out the meaning (or at least his working meaning) of 'good' in that phrase

I don’t think he is. I think he is clarifying what is most good and noting that goods are what we aim at.

Even the first sentence would contradict his second sentence if I accepted what you are saying:

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action as well as choice, is held to aim at some good. Hence people have nobly declared that the good is that at which all things aim

The first sentence clearly states that we aim at things that are good; which implies that there is a difference between aiming at something good and aiming at something bad; but if what is ‘good’ is just what we aim at, then there is no such distinction.

But this is where Aristotle disagrees with Plato. Aristotle thinks there is no Platonic Form of the Good.

I wasn’t suggesting otherwise: ‘the good’, in the sense Aristotle is using it in that sentence, refers to what is most good. ‘the good’ does not, as a phrase, exclusively refer to the platonic Form of ‘The Good’.

I mostly want to save this debate for another day. What I will say is that 'good' is notoriously difficult to define

It is clearly a bad definition, and I think it is clear Aristotle is not trying to define it there. The concept of ‘good’ is not identical to the concept of ‘aiming at something’ or ‘that which is aimed at’.
Likewise, your quote of Aquinas does not define good as that which everything aims at:

Consequently the first principle of practical reason is one founded on the notion of good, viz. that "good is that which all things seek after."

He is just noting, rightly, just like Aristotle, that beings aim at perceived goods: no man aims at what is bad, except insofar as it is a means towards the good.

The difficulty with defining 'good' is that it ignores our subjective/objective distinction and it can act as a grammatical modifier of pretty much anything.

Does it, though? I would say the concept of good is identical to the concept of value.

I think Aristotle is just using the concept of good and claiming that what is good for a thing is for it to be excellent at what it was designed to do.

Saying "we ought to be virtuous" is expressing a duty to being virtuous: I take those to be the same thing, so I am not following your distinctions here.

To illustrate this, one can take the example of genetic transcription in biology: If we have a DNA sequence, this in itself does not possess genetic expression; it is only in its relation to the RNA and the process of transcription that something like an expression takes place. The idea here is that what we believe to be the prefigured result does not actually exist but only takes place in the relationship of the DNA to an other that interprets and translates it in its own way. The information of who we are is not in the genes, but, strangely enough, in the unprecedented process of transcription, interpretation, translation, etc., itself.

This doesn’t negate in the slightest that we are biologically predetermined in various ways: which is just to say that our bodies have functions. Those functions dictate our design in a weak sense of Telos.

Likewise, someone who wants to go for a strong version of Telos could say that evolution is a process ultimately with a design—but this is not something required for my position. My eye, even with everything you said, is designed to see; and to see in a particular way.

"Existence precedes essence" (Sartre)

This is the consequence of failing to see Telos in things—even in a weak sense. One resorts (typically) to radical individualism.

Man clearly has an essence; and just because it isn’t eternal doesn’t change that. My eye is designed to see and in such-and-such a manner: does that mean that it isn’t undergoing a process of evolution, and partaking in a broader process of evolution as it pertains to procreation? Of course not.

You are trying to go from “everything is transitory” to “nothing has an essence”.

I agree that we do not commonly call them "intentional", but in the sense that they are the direct effect of the intentional act, just like the desired end is the direct effect of the intentional end, there is fundamentally no essential difference between them

You just described the essential difference between them.

You claim that the effect of the act can be separated from its cause, to say that the cause was intentional but the effect was not intentional.

Yes, the cause and the effect can be separated in this way because, you are forgetting, intentionality is an idea (end) being aimed at; so it is entirely possible for a person to aim at something and completely or partially miss—like an an archer trying to hit their mark. If an archer misses and hits a deer instead of the bullseye they were aiming at, was killing the deer intentional? Of course not. If I take your position seriously, then it would be; because your view attaches the intentionality of an act to all causality related effects.

The fact that a person misjudges the effects of one's actions does not make the effects any less intentional.

Before we dive into this, I need you to define what you mean by “intention”; because you are using it in very unwieldy ways here.

A judgement as to the probability of success of one's intentional acts, is not useful toward determining whether the effect of that act is intentional or not.

The point is that what one knows is relevant to what one is aiming at.

Suppose I flip a coin, and the probability is 50/50. No matter what the outcome is, that outcome was intended, because I flipped the coin for the purpose of having an outcome, and the particular outcome which occurs is irrelevant to that intent

Sure, but that doesn’t negate anything I said. My point was that, e.g., you intentionally let a person die if you foresee that there is a 99% chance that the mere act of flipping the coin, which you intend to flip, will directly result in the death of a person. Was is intentional is not solely about the causation that occurs from a given act: it is more fundamentally about what the person is aiming at.

I supose the issue here is one of which is to be king.

Why would we have to choose between deontology or consequentialism?

Deontology is about what we ought to do, while virtue ethics is about who we choose to be. I take it that we can maintain a distinction between being kind because it is the right thing to do, and being kind because one would be a kind person.

This kind of distinction, where what we ought to do is squarely in the realm of deontology, seems false to me: living a virtuous life is about being good, and this is about how we ought to live to be good. The way you’ve separated them, it seems like virtue ethics borrows from deontology to figure out what one ought to be doing.

The difference is in background, in whether one is choosing one's actions because of a duty or because those actions make one a better person.

I would say that one’s duty to what is good comes first, and from that one realizes that the best way to align with what is good is to think about normative ethics in terms of living a virtuous life and not in terms of duties to preordained rules. So I guess deontology secretly wins (: even though it is still getting negated as the result. Still, though, the same can be said of consequentialism: right and wrong behavior being views solely in terms of which consequences maximizes the desired outcome is itself an absolutely applicable moral principle. So I guess deontology, in a trivial sense, wins; but this doesn’t take away from the fact that consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics are fundamentally contrary to one another.

Thus separating hysterectomy from abortion, in your description, which only has the negative effect of fetal death. 2 vs 1, double vs single.

I separated the hysterectomy abortion from a “traditional” abortion; and each were outlined with 1 good effect and 1 bad effect—totally two effects each. I don’t understand where you got the 2 vs. 1 from.

When in reality abortion already has two negative effects (which are in conflict), the fetal vs the maternal interest (survival vs bodily autonomy)

They are in not in moral conflict, like I noted before: one cannot do something immoral to produce a good end. The good end of respecting the interests of the woman with respect to her body cannot be achieve at the expense of killing someone.

The bad effect of not respecting the woman’s interests in the case of a traditional abortion is not a result of an immoral action or inaction; so the agent deciding whether to carry it out cannot be morally responsible for it. On the contrary, an agent carries out the traditional abortion to produce the good effect (of which is the negation of your negative effect you referred to), then they have done something immoral because they intentionally killed an innocent person as a means towards that good end.

You said you understood this point I made earlier; but I don’t think you did, because you seemed to skip over it without addressing it.

Fair enough :up:

Your translations help clarify a bit. My translation says:

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action as well as choice, is held to aim at some good. Hence people have nobly declared that the good is that at which all things aim

Which is, compared to your citations, a poor translation (apparently). Irregardless, if I take it that his second sentence is a definition (and not an assertion that about what nobility think), then:

1. He is defining what he thinks the good is, and not what good is itself. 'The good' refers to what is supremely and ultimately good, which he seems to be claiming is whatever all things aim at. This is not a definition of the concept of 'good'.

2. If I assume he means to define "good", as opposed to "the good", as "that which all things aim at", then this seems like an incredibly inadequate definition. Firstly, there seem to clearly, even by Aristotle's own admission, be things which agents aim at which are good but are not universally aimed at by all agents (e.g., pleasure). Secondly, if "good = that which all things aim at" then when someone says "well-being is good" they are saying "well-being is something that all things aim at" which is both false and does not capture the essence of what they are trying to express with the word "good".

But is something accidental if it not only could have but should have been forseen?

Yes. No one would say I intentionally killed someone by drunk driving if they knew for certain that I genuinely did not foresee the serious possibility of killing or injuring someone by drunk driving. For example, a severely cognitively challenged person who gets their hands on some alcohol and ends up drunk driving probably isn’t capable of foreseeable the obvious possibility that they may injure or kill someone. In practicality, most people cannot get away with claiming they did not foresee it (because we do not believe them) or, if they can, we hold them responsible for their negligence (as opposed to their intentions).

Unintended consequences are not necessarily accidental, only unforseen.

What do you think an “intention” is? If a consequence of something intended is accidental, then it was unintentional: that’s what it means for it to be accidental.

However, in another sense, when something is the effect of intention, we say it is intentional regardless of whether the effect is accidental.

Not necessarily. If the side effect is not easily foreseen, then we typically don't consider it intentional; or we might say that it was intentional insofar as the person was aware that there was a chance of it happening and accepting those odds. However, in the case that it is foreseeable or was foreseen (with high probability)(all else being equal), then I completely agree it was intentional: it as indirectly intended, which entails it was not accidental.

You can't say some accidents are intentional: that's like saying some orange squares are not orange.

For example, I swing the hammer at a nail, and accidentally hit my thumb. The act of swinging the hammer was intentional, regardless of whether I hit the nail or my thumb. So whether the nail is hit or my thumb nail is hit, is irrelevant to the fact that the act which results in one or the other is an intentional act. So even though it is my thumb which is hit, the act which has that effect is intentional.

The hammer hitting your thumb was not intentional whatsoever prima facie in your example. The act of swinging the hammer, intending to bring about the end of hitting the nail into something, was intentional. Now, let's say you foresaw that the hammer might hit your thumb and new this with 20% probability and still decided to carry it out: we would say that you intentionally swung the hammer knowing it may result in an accident, but we would NOT say that you intentionally caused that accident. Now, let's say you foresaw with a 99% probability that you were going to cause the accident instead of what you really intend, then we might say you intended it because of the probabilistic certainty that you had of bringing it about. It depends though, because we might say you are just stupid and didn't realize that it doesn't make sense to carry it out with that high of a probability; or we might say you are unwise (unprudent) for doing it anyways out of (presumably) passion or desire to hit the nail.

My main point is just that accidents, by definition, cannot be intentional. That's categorically incoherent to posit.

I am not following: please outline the three effects of a standard abortion that are relevant to the end of ceasing the pregnancy.

Most interesting. I am also a virtue ethicist; but wouldn't you agree that even a virtue ethicist needs to formulate generally or even absolutely applicable moral principles, and adhere to them, in order to cultivate and maintain a virtuous character as well as to guide them through life?

E.g., I find it hard to envision how a person could deliberately cultivate a character such that they are kind, if it were not for the fact that they knew that they generally or absolutely should be kind (which is itself a moral principle). Likewise, e.g., having instilled a disposition (i.e., a habit) of being kind is not enough to know how to act kindly in every situation; or, if it is, then it is impractical for the common man with an average intelligence. It seems like, to me, a person who holds moral compasses primal over principles still will have to, as a secondary aspect of their theory, accept the necessity of the latter.

@Leontiskos is using a very Aristotelian concept of choice; whereas @Banno is using it in the modern sense.

For Aristotle, an act can be voluntary without being a choice; but it sounds like Banno would deny this distinction altogether. It seems like a mere semantically disagreement in the end. When speaking to Banno, I would just clarify that by "choice" I am referring to what they call "deliberate choice". At the end of the day, I don't think such a dispute amounts to anything but semantics, but maybe I am misunderstanding.

The OP is NOT contending with whether or not a standard abortion is wrong or not: it is just using it as an example for the principle of double effect, and presupposes that it is wrong and offers a relevant difference between it and the permissibility of performing a hysterectomy.

With respect to whether or not abortion is wrong, which is a completely separate topic, I would say it is immoral because directly intentionally killing an innocent person is always wrong. One cannot do something immoral for the sake of producing a good end: so even if it is good to uphold the autonomy of people, it does not follow that one can kill an innocent person as a means towards that end; just as much as someone cannot violate the autonomy of one person as a means towards saving the life of another (on the flip side).

Likewise, to just anticipate the first response, abortion is not a case where one is violating the autonomy of the mother as a means to saving the life of the unborn child. There is an unborn child and its mother who does not want to be pregnant (for whatever reason) to start out, and now one must decide whether they are going to (1) kill the unborn child as a means towards respecting the mother's wishes or (2) let the woman's wishes be violated. In the case of the former, they are committing an immoral act; in the case of the latter they are letting something bad happen (at best) because they cannot do anything that is morally permissible to remedy the situation.

Again, this has nothing directly to do with the OP; but I am more than happy to discuss it.

:lol:

As to the abortion example, your comments make the (common) error of omitting the immorality of trampling the bodily autonomy of an adult human should abortion be outlawed. — LuckyR

I didn't follow this part: what do you mean by that?