Good, bad, ugly

[Wonder Woman]

Not my questions, alhought we touch on these often in other discussions but never in great depth, so here's an opportunity to state your opinion and have it torn to shreds by the other philosophers present:

What is good and what is bad or evil? What is moral? What is ethical?

Who decides good and bad, right and wrong; and by what standard?

Is there an absolute standard of good and bad beyond one’s personal opinions?

Should good and bad be determined by custom, by rational law, or by the situation?

What if the decisions of others (society, authorities, laws, etc) determining good and bad are contrary to one’s personal beliefs or freedoms? Should you obey others or follow your own conscience?

[mouse]

am going to have to think on this one...so many answers could be given most conflicting

[beth]

I suppose we're are all capable of a wide spectrum of good and bad, somewhere between the shadow and the ego. It largely depends on outside prompts .. motivation, provocation, inclination and other influences.

The deviates among us do not appear to have a working set of mental brakes. Whether that's caused by trauma or a glitch in the physical makeup is debatable.

jmo

[Deleted]

Lynne, whole BOOKS have been written on JUST this subject!

It's actually one I've been planning to post for some time but it doesn't matter.

One thing that is a big problem for moral debate is that ethical propositions cannot be either 'true' or 'false' as is the case with other types of disputed issues.

NO truth-claim CAN entail a value judgement so although I could say (and DO say) that IMHO people such as Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot WERE evil that is not a position that could be demonstrated either logically or factually.

There are essentially five basic answers to the question of good and evil.

One is ethical subjectivism - there IS no absolute good or bad and we simply formulate our own ideas on the subject.

Another is the 'law' theory - the notion that good and bad consist in obeying some universal law (or, as Kant called it, 'categorical imperative,')

There is the 'end' theory which holds that it is the purpose, motives and intention of the person that make their actions good or bad.

The fourth try is 'situation' ethics which believes that each action has to be evaluated on an individual basis to determine its status as a good or evil act.

The final try is to suggest that there is a specific quality or set of qualities which, separately or collectively, make up what we call 'goodness' or 'evil.' This was the view held by Schopenhauer.

There are many good arguments in favour of all the competing theories. The fundamental problem with any 'law' theory is that it fails to answer the question 'why SHOULD I obey the law?'

With an end theory - the most common example being those who claim that 'pleasure' is the 'good' - the fundamental problem is that it is counterintutive and paradoxical. Even the most sophisiticated exponents of hedonism, such as John Stuart Mill, end up running into wildly self-contradictory statements.

Situation ethics is unpopular because people tend to prefer simple answers. Since so many people find it difficult to think for themselves, they prefer to accept a ready-made code from religious, political or similar types of organisation to tell them how they OUGHT to think and behave.

My own view is perhaps closest to Schopenhauer's though I also have a lot of sympathy for the situation ethics position. Schopenhauer said (I paraphrase rather than quote) that the only absolutely GOOD thing in life was kindness and the only absolutely EVIL one cruelty.

I find it difficult to disagree with that as a guiding principle for conduct!

[mouse]

Jul 23, 2010 11:21:42 GMT -5 @mikemarshall said:

- there IS no absolute good or bad and we simply formulate our own ideas on the subject.

There is the 'end' theory which holds that it is the purpose, motives and intention of the person that make their actions good or bad.

The fourth try is 'situation' ethics which believes that each action has to be evaluated on an individual basis to determine its status as a good or evil act.


Situation ethics is unpopular because people tend to prefer simple answers. Since so many people find it difficult to think for themselves, they prefer to accept a ready-made code from religious, political or similar types of organisation to tell them how they OUGHT to think and behave.

i believe there is good and bad....if a deed is to harm its bad[theft/murder/rape etc
if a deed help its good...to carry a heavy load..to give a lift..to give aid etc

as not all actions are planned then intention doesnt come into it...
and the ""i didnt mean it"" get out doesnt really wash when it comes to intentions

situation ethics is a nonsence imo...
""Since so many people find it difficult to think for themselves, they prefer to accept a ready-made code from religious, political or similar types of organisation to tell them how they OUGHT to think and behave.""
trouble when down that road some one comes along who does think for them selves,,doesnt tick the right box and is then villified
telling people HOW they should think is a dangerous road..very open to political manupulation as we have seen with the words..bigot..racist..tollorance...used so often and so often for the wrong reasons and in the wrong context these words have become debased
the lack of expecting people to come to their own conclusions is the very basis of political correctness..of keeping people quiet and malliable

[Jessiealan]

"""There are essentially five basic answers to the question of good and evil.

One is ethical subjectivism - there IS no absolute good or bad and we simply formulate our own ideas on the subject.

Another is the 'law' theory - the notion that good and bad consist in obeying some universal law (or, as Kant called it, 'categorical imperative,')

There is the 'end' theory which holds that it is the purpose, motives and intention of the person that make their actions good or bad.

The fourth try is 'situation' ethics which believes that each action has to be evaluated on an individual basis to determine its status as a good or evil act.

The final try is to suggest that there is a specific quality or set of qualities which, separately or collectively, make up what we call 'goodness' or 'evil.' This was the view held by Schopenhauer.***


Recently, I have read about moral naturalism (also called ethical naturalism). Moral naturalists "believe that we have moral sentiments that have emerged from a long history of relationships. To learn about morality, you don’t rely upon revelation or metaphysics; you observe people as they live" .

www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/opinion/23brooks.html?_r=1&ref=columnists

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_naturalism

Is this different or only a variation of one of the five mentioned above?

[Erasmus]

Do not unto others what you would not have them do unto you

[Deleted]

Essentially, that sounds a good idea, Erasmus. (It is, like Kant's Categorical Imperative, a fairly old precept.)

However, it would also create a great many problems.

For instance, a melancholic could easily wish that the human race would commit suicide.

A masochist could easily be indifferent to the pain and suffering of others since that is what they crave for themselves.

There are far more complex examples but those two are sufficient to show that the so-called 'golden rule' of mutuality does NOT always provide a sufficient basis for morality.

[beth]

Don't the "not"s make it negetive? If one is "not" doing, wouldn't it negate their own personal preferences?

[Erasmus]

It is called the Silver Rule and attributed to at least the pre-Christian Rabbis Hillel and Gamaliel. Mike misread it for the popular positive Golden Rule (which I sometimes think of as the Rapist's Charter - I like it so you must). That is why the negative matters so much.

I'm sure many of us have been treated to children especially in all sincerity doing for us what they would like done for them and I have memories of doing it myself.How often have we given in to relentless Go on, you'll like it once you try it to confirm that we tried it and still didn't like it? I did not like crab as a child - unfortunately since I helped to catch a lot of them that the rest of the family lived on and I did not like it 25 years ago picking it out of a salad sandwich where I had though it was a white cheese. We know too, all about religious bigots determined to save the eternal soul of others no matter what the cost to their ephemeral body. Good intentions are always a sure way to Hell.

The negative rule means that if you won't always get it right, at least you won't get it wrong. You may disappoint by not volunteering what somebody would welcome, but you won't be forcing your preferences on them.

On general principle, nobody has ever settled the question of what is right or wrong. It concerned Plato and his generation in particular, the next took his disciple Aristotle's lead and turned their attention to the practicalities of how the world works. Plato's answer was that The Good is what benefits the Community (usually translated The State but the two would have meant the same to him) as good a bit of ancient proto-Fascism as could be wanted and not surprising that Plato's ideal State (Politeía - 'Republic') was a mixture of Spartan militarism and Indian Caste presided over by the Philosopher-King, from which lascivious musical modes (like our Major Key) are banned for their lascivious effect and if there are any females, then they are either out of sight having babies or brandishing spears naked with the men. Some feminists sound much the same apart from the babies aspect - but somebody has to do it.

I recommend Xanthippic Dialogues as an antidote to Plato, although I don't agree with all of it. In particular, there is the question of Tis phylaxei tous phylakas seautous? more familiar in the language developing around his time in an obscure 'barbarian' town near the Western Colonies as Quis custodiet custodes ispos?.

It needed monotheism to find the cop-out that Good is what God wishes, leading to the inversion that whatever somebody can claim is done by God or in God's name, is perforce 'Good', no matter how evil by normal criteria. St. Paul made an attempt by saying roughly, that 'good' was about compassion (Agapeh, translated Love and Charity {Caritas}) and anything in 'Scripture' (Torah) that described 'God' that way was of God while the various wrathful and murderous Yahweh of Armies (Lord of Hosts) and similar were of Man, that is, justifications no different from Mars or Marduk or Witzilopochtli for ancient imperialism.

Unfortunately, while St. Paul sounds good, logically he gives a circular argument. Maybe that's the real issue: Good or Bad isn't a logical matter. It is an emotional one that in a sense does require a kind of monotheism - or at least a Supreme Ideal that most of us somehow feel instinctively through that process of knowing what we would want to avoid for ourselves and feeling empathy and compassion putting ourself in the place of others. The more concerned with your self, the less able to see others as the same, and more inured to their feelings, and to see life as a battle them or me - the more, that is, in the world of immediate animal reactions, even if with great logical thought, far from what I've called instinct, in the empathic sense, not the blind reaction to stimulus one.

That is most of the problem: the subjects transcend the language. We are mentally aware of possibilities beyond our knowledge and even have developed formal language to describe what we can't understand or feel or experience physically and certainly can only describe by metaphorical or jargon use of our common languages developed from and for purely animal needs and experiences. We can't even describe a lot to each other that we experience physically - especially between the sexes! Even if it be the same, we can't be certain that it is!

Likewise, we can't understand what ancients wrote about their understanding because we not only no longer speak the Greek and Sanskrit with their linguistic map, but can be fairly sure that they often used words in a technical jargon sense that not many people of the time understood. You can get an idea by taking scientific terms literally in languages like German, Icelandic, Russian, Chinese, that have tried to avoid Graeco-Latin imports. Sauerstoff is Stuff that causes Sour, Wasserstoff is stuff that causes water, ein Rundfunk spark[le]s round - but what does any of that mean? Put it in Greek and it's Oxygen and Hydrogen but we no longer think of them in the literal meaning Plato would have given - and Rundfunk or Útvarp (out-warp/out-throw in Icelandic) is Broadcast, specifically Radio (Greek for Fast) because that came first - and Broadcast itself used to mean sowing seeds.

'Good' and 'Evil' are subjective. They are susceptible to compromise. Isaac Asimov wrote his series of robot stories that in effect define a robot as being built to be 'safe', a kind of ideal Communist. Later, he realized that his robotic laws were unworkable in absolute and wrote detective style stories about robots being tricked into breaking them or behaving irrationally because of conflicts in strict logic (something very familiar in older mainframe computers!) He introduced a Zeroth Law of Robotics that a robot must always put the interests of Humanity above all else, even the individual human being. This was a kind of evolution that not all robots shared.

What is interesting he wrote it appearing benign, but authors who have developed his universe (some with his near-death approval) have made it malign The Greater Good in their account becomes the ultimate nanny state for ever protecting humanity from itself for its own good destroying billions of both non-humans and humans whose activities threaten the status quo and thus Greater Good of Humanity in general. In fact one of his earliest and least-known stories (The End of Eternity?) had a similar theme set in time of preventing boat-rocking.

In the end, What is Good, What is Evil? We cannot tell - but we damn-well know!