Haven’t those who reject morality just because of its religious roots ended up constructing another belief system

[Immanuel Can]

That was why I was careful to say 'other things being equal'.

Yes, I saw...but I can't see anything "unequal" in cases of athletic pain, which is chosen by the athlete, or birth pain, which is chosen by the mother, or the pain of a surgery that saves a life. So I can't agree that pain and bad are the same thing.

I'm not claiming that pain and bad are the same thing (i.e. numerically identical). I claim that badness is necessarily a property of pain (in the sense in which philosophers usually use the word 'pain'). Let me put this as accurately as I can. By 'pain' I mean any experience that is subjectively unpleasant.

That's obviously not the case either. Giving birth is subjectively unpleasant and painful, and yet is the most cherished experience of many women, and one they insist it associated with good, not "badness." Exercise is both painful and healthy, and is highly recommended and freely practiced by athletes, who insist it's "good" for them...and so on.

And what I'm saying is not new: all hedonic and hedonistic ethical systems, such as utilitarianism and the other consequentialisms, have been criticized in the same way.

I'm sure you are aware that an argument cannot be won simply by claiming that other people have advanced similar arguments.

I'm not so sure you're aware of those critiques, which present a substantial challenge to what you're saying. The complications of things like "the pleasure principle" and "the hedonic calculus" have been well-documented and abundantly repeated. It seems tiresome to me to repeat them now, since they're so widely available in the literature. I'm hopeful you've got some acquaintance with them yourself, or will invest the time to do so.

You'll have to define very precisely when "things are equal," so to speak...what conditions can signal to us that we have "equality" in a case.

No, that misses the point. I am not claiming that there are actual cases where other things are equal. What I mean is that if we ignore all other facts which might alter the moral or evaluative properties of a case, and consider only the unpleasantness of the experience, then it is always the case that that unpleasantness is bad.

And I'm simply pointing out that that is not the case. There is no such easy association between the two, and the matter is often much more muddled. Pain can be associated with very great goods, such as the acquistion of wisdom or the learning of empathy, with the attaining of improved health and fitness, with heroic sacrifices, and of course with many great achievements. A suffering hero is not considered "bad," because he refuses to compromise his values to avoid pain; indeed, he may well be considered less-heroic or a traitor for accepting a less-painful way out of a situation.

So, for example, in the case of the surgeon saving the life, if we ignore the fact that a life is being saved, and consider only the pain caused to the patient, it is necessarily the case that that pain, or more accurately the unpleasantness of the pain, is bad.

So you're speaking by way of isolating one element of the experience, namely pain, from the total experience, and severing it from the very meaning of the event (such as giving birth to a child or competing in athletics), and then claiming it's evidence that pain is morally "bad"?

You're abstracting, and no longer describing any real experience, then. It seems obvious to me that the surgeon does is unquestionably "good" in total, even though it entails the causing of pain and harm. And that is because in reality, it is quite impossible to isolate out and decontextualize "pain" in the way you're suggesting we ought to do. And if we do, we find that we lack the necessary surrounding circumstances to make any moral assessment at all of the situation in hand.

You wrote: "It appears to me that the likeability of pleasure and the dislikeability of pain are not merely intrinsic properties, but essential properties."

This creates additional problems: one is that to me, and apparently to a whole lot of the critics of hedonic ethics, it's far from clear that pain is inherently "dislikeable." Rather, that seems to be situationally decided, and there are certainly cases in which pain is accepted or even embraced as "pleasurable" in some other way. (Here, I don't merely allude to phenomena like sadism and masochism, though they also furnish countercases, but in situations in which we note the truthfulness of the ancient observation that suffering is often itself the road to a virtuous outcome, such as the acquiring of wisdom and the improvement of the character.)

I hope I have answered this point by clarifying that what is bad is the unpleasantness of pain.

Not at all. I think my objection is a very serious one, and cannot be dismissed by way of mere abstraction of the sort you propose. And I don't think that "unpleasant" can at all be unproblematically or universally associated with moral "badness." There seems to me no link at all: one is mere emotional response, and the other calls on us for an objective moral conclusion. Hume would surely point out the incompatibility of the premise you're implying and any moral conclusion -- a revised "Hume's Guillotine," if you will: emotions severed from morals by way of being different categories.

If there are indeed people who find pain pleasant, then for those people, pain is not bad.

Then "pain" and "bad" are, by your own account, no longer equivalent and no longer guarantors of one another -- which is precisely the point in my objection. And the sadist and the masochist are "moral"?

It is unfortunate that 'pain' is used instead of 'unpleasantness' in philosophy:

"Unpleasantness" is even more trivial than "pain." For who promised us that life is not supposed to be "unpleasant"? And if it is, then how on earth do we associate that with any moral quality of "badness"?

But the second problem is even bigger: how do we attach the word "likeabilty" to the words "good" or "essential"? What is there in this world, secularly considered, that would assure us that what we "like" is good, and that we are owed in any moral or even practical sense to have what we "like"? That argument surely needs to be spelled out. That is yet to be achieved here.

I thought I had made this clear. Likeability is an example of a property that gives reason for a pro-response.

I have yet to see you establish that "things one likes" and "moral" are equivalent. A masochist has a "pro-response" to the thought of causing himself pain, and a sadist has a "pro-response" to causing the pain of others, no doubt; and no doubt they can adduce many reasons for their preferences. But their "pro-responses" are clearly no signal of moral goodness.

The next problem is in the idea of "essential" moral status. In a world governed by secular assumptions, how do we secure to ourselves the confidence that "good" or "likeability," or any other word you wish, is an "essential" anything? Could we not simply say that the order of Nature (our God substitute) is "red in tooth and claw," or "survival of the fittest," with total disregard for "good" or "like"? Darwinism would certainly hasten us toward that conclusion: so how would we justify the faith that indifferent Nature cares about the "good" and "likings" of only one species, or indeed of any at all? And how would we go about locating these "essences" in the merely material universe?

...All I claim (and let me use the more accurate words this time) is that likeability is an essential property of pleasantness, and dislikeability is an essential property of unpleasantness.

"Liking" is not moral. It's merely an emotional reaction, and one that the sadist and masochist can claim in full measure. The moral status of their choices is left untouched by any such assessment.

My claim, then, is that you cannot have an experience which is pleasant which is not also in itself likeable, nor an experience which is unpleasant and which is not also in itself dislikeable.

But this is surely circular. "Pleasant," i.e. "that which pleases," is also unquestionably that which one "likes," and hence, has "likeability." So no progress at all is made by succeeding in liking two such near synonyms. People like X, and people find it pleasurable. But where's the moral relevance? People like or dislike, or find pleasant or unpleasant, all sorts of things: but that still leaves us in the dark as to the moral status of what they like or find pleasant.

But you see that things get very complicated very fast. And I didn't want to overwhelm you with negatives, so I picked my best shot with premise 1, and left the rest until later. I was not dishonouring your effort; I was trying to set a doable and clear level of response-opportunity for you, rather than cavilling at every tiny point and overwhelming you with all these things I could have added.

And I'm offering you the chance to improve that first premise. If you don't, the argument become untenable at the first post, of course. But if you fix that unwarranted suppostion, I'm fine with entertaining the next one, and the next, and so on. This is how philosophy works. This is logic. This is critique. Try not to take it personally.

You needn't worry on that score. I had all that knocked out of me by my tutors in three years as a philosophy undergrad at Oxford. I hope I have answered your objections thus far, but if you think I haven't, by all means have another go at me.

Quite. You'll note my continued objections above.

You missed my second premise: "only the Creator can possibly say what the purpose/telos (or, we might say, rightful good) is for all men." (see above) That's obviously true, too: only the one who created can say why or for what end a particular thing was created, since only His volition, and nobody else's, was involved.

Now, you're right that I owe you another premise in addition to that, but I thought it was pretty obvious: "God says that man was created to have fellowship with Him." I could have added, "The Christian God does not lie," but both of these are part of the very definition of "the Christian God," so I didn't feel the need to state them. However, here they are.

Okay, so your argument now becomes this:
1. God created man for fellowship with Him.
2. Only the Creator can possibly say what the purpose/telos (or, we might say, rightful good) is for all men.
3. Therefore, , seeking and having fellowship with God is an unalloyed good for all men.
Clearly 1. stands in need of support, in the form of evidence and/or argument.

It actually doesn't, in this case. For the point is not to convince you of the truth of Theism, as much as I think that's a worthy goal. The purpose is only the more modest claim that IF Theism is true, it is capable of providing rational warrant for morality; whereas secularism, even IF it were true, would never be able to do any such thing.

Therefore, it is not necessary for you to believe in Theism personally in order to see the truth of that; all you need to see is that the conclusion does, indeed, follow necessarily if the two premises are believed. And it is not necessary for me to believe in secularism in order to point out that secularism, even if we grant its premises, cannot rationally produce any conclusion entailing morality.

But in the context of the current discussion, 2. is of more interest. This seems to be in effect the same claim you have been making, i.e. that God can create values of good and evil. Now I want to ask you a question: what do you think the words 'good' and 'bad' mean?

I have actually posted on this several places before. God does not "create" the values, in the sense that He "creates" the world or man. Rather, the values "good" and "bad," and all other moral terms, proceed from the relationship between the actions in question and the nature of God Himself. That which is consonant and harmonious with the nature and purposes of God is "good," and that which is contrary to the nature and purposes of God is "bad." The consummate good for man is fellowship with his Creator. That which produces distance in that relationship is both functionally and morally "bad" for mankind; that which conduces to harmony with the Creator is functionally beneficial and morally "good" for mankind.

And now, to you.

[Gary Childress]

That was why I was careful to say 'other things being equal'.

Yes, I saw...but I can't see anything "unequal" in cases of athletic pain, which is chosen by the athlete, or birth pain, which is chosen by the mother, or the pain of a surgery that saves a life. So I can't agree that pain and bad are the same thing.

I'm not claiming that pain and bad are the same thing (i.e. numerically identical). I claim that badness is necessarily a property of pain (in the sense in which philosophers usually use the word 'pain'). Let me put this as accurately as I can. By 'pain' I mean any experience that is subjectively unpleasant.

That's obviously not the case either. Giving birth is subjectively unpleasant and painful, and yet is the most cherished experience of many women, and one they insist it associated with good, not "badness." Exercise is both painful and healthy, and is highly recommended and freely practiced by athletes, who insist it's "good" for them...and so on.

I've always heard women say that the pain of giving birth is an enormously difficult pain to deal with (more so than most things that most men have ever had to deal with). If they could give birth without pain or threat of death, then I'm pretty sure all but masochists or fanatical traditionalists would opt for painless birth. It seems like it is the pain that makes birth unpleasant. Pain is the extra ingredient that no one wants. The same goes for surgery. If a doctor can cure with a pill what would otherwise require surgery, then I'm pretty sure most of us would opt for the pill. Also with fitness, people are always looking for alternative, "easy" routes to fitness that don't involve pain or discomfort.

It seems clear to me that pain is pretty much universally a bad thing. The only exception is when it's associated with some good consequence which cannot be achieved by other means and that outweighs pain's negative effect, such as physical fitness, surgery, or childbirth.

I assume what you want is to say that because some good things require pain, then pain is not a universally bad thing? But that doesn't follow from the examples of childbirth, physical fitness, or surgery. It seems to me that you would need to point to an example of pain that is welcomed for its own sake and not for any other reason. What would be an example of pain (itself) that is not bad or that is desirable for no other reason than its own sake?

[Immanuel Can]

Yes, I saw...but I can't see anything "unequal" in cases of athletic pain, which is chosen by the athlete, or birth pain, which is chosen by the mother, or the pain of a surgery that saves a life. So I can't agree that pain and bad are the same thing.

I'm not claiming that pain and bad are the same thing (i.e. numerically identical). I claim that badness is necessarily a property of pain (in the sense in which philosophers usually use the word 'pain'). Let me put this as accurately as I can. By 'pain' I mean any experience that is subjectively unpleasant.

That's obviously not the case either. Giving birth is subjectively unpleasant and painful, and yet is the most cherished experience of many women, and one they insist it associated with good, not "badness." Exercise is both painful and healthy, and is highly recommended and freely practiced by athletes, who insist it's "good" for them...and so on.

I've always heard women say that the pain of giving birth is an enormously difficult pain to deal with (more so than most things that most men have ever had to deal with). If they could give birth without pain or threat of death, then I'm pretty sure all but masochists or fanatical traditionalists would opt for painless birth.

No doubt. But the question is, does that make giving birth morally bad? That seems an unreasonable conclusion, even though significant pain is part of the process. So the claim pain = badness does not bear scrutiny.

It seems clear to me that pain is pretty much universally a bad thing.

Only, perhaps, in abstraction from everything associated with it. And in life, it never comes unassociated with other things.

So, for example, one might say, "I don't like pain, so I don't enjoy my exercise." But that would be different from saying, "Exercise is bad," or "Only things I enjoy can be good." Thus, the presence of pain tells us nothing about the value or moral status of the things with which it may be associated.

It seems to me that you would need to point to an example of pain that is welcomed for its own sake and not for any other reason.

We do not need that. For I am not arguing that pain = good anymore than I'm arguing that pain = bad. Nor does it matter whether or not we "welcome" things. Rather, I would point out that pain MAY accompany potentially bad situations, but MAY also accompany generally-recognized good ones...such as the process of maturing and growing wise, for example.

The presence of pain tells us nothing about the moral status of the associated situation, in other words. And even if that realization is less than "welcome," well, that's actually not relevant either.

[iambiguous]

Speaking of pain:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_earthquakes'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_l ... _eruptions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... l_cyclones
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tsunamis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_landslides
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fires
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_e ... _pandemics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_floods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_records
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_diseases
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events

This is often the bottom line for me in regard to any belief system...God or No God.

And I have yet to come upon anyone [of late] who can encompass the staggering pain sustained here in an explanation that justifies it.

Sure, as a Christian, I was able to subsume it all in God's mysterious ways. And I'd like to again.

If only there was substantive and substantial scientific and historical proof that He existed...that He could explain all that pain away.

[Gary Childress]

That's obviously not the case either. Giving birth is subjectively unpleasant and painful, and yet is the most cherished experience of many women, and one they insist it associated with good, not "badness." Exercise is both painful and healthy, and is highly recommended and freely practiced by athletes, who insist it's "good" for them...and so on.

I've always heard women say that the pain of giving birth is an enormously difficult pain to deal with (more so than most things that most men have ever had to deal with). If they could give birth without pain or threat of death, then I'm pretty sure all but masochists or fanatical traditionalists would opt for painless birth.

No doubt. But the question is, does that make giving birth morally bad? That seems an unreasonable conclusion, even though significant pain is part of the process. So the claim pain = badness does not bear scrutiny.

It seems clear to me that pain is pretty much universally a bad thing.

Only, perhaps, in abstraction from everything associated with it. And in life, it never comes unassociated with other things.

So, for example, one might say, "I don't like pain, so I don't enjoy my exercise." But that would be different from saying, "Exercise is bad," or "Only things I enjoy can be good." Thus, the presence of pain tells us nothing about the value or moral status of the things with which it may be associated.

It seems to me that you would need to point to an example of pain that is welcomed for its own sake and not for any other reason.

We do not need that. For I am not arguing that pain = good anymore than I'm arguing that pain = bad. Nor does it matter whether or not we "welcome" things. Rather, I would point out that pain MAY accompany potentially bad situations, but MAY also accompany generally-recognized good ones...such as the process of maturing and growing wise, for example.

The presence of pain tells us nothing about the moral status of the associated situation, in other words. And even if that realization is less than "welcome," well, that's actually not relevant either.

I would say pain = bad, hands down. To say that pain is neither good nor bad seems absurd. It's like trying to tell people that slavery is neither good nor bad.

[Immanuel Can]

I would say pain = bad, hands down.

Some pain probably is bad. But it's not badness, if you can catch the difference.

That is, "bad" might be an adjective that can sometimes, or even often, be applied to situations involving pain. But it's not at all the case that the presence of pain entails that what is going on is morally bad. Like I say: birth, learning, exercise, becoming wise, aging, heroism...all inevitably involve pain...but those things remain good. Likewise, theft, embezzlement, brutality, selfishness...all kinds of things may be pain-free to the perpetrator, and even delightful to him or her, but that doesn't imply they therefore are morally good. I doubt you can regard that as controversial.

So clearly, it's not the presence of pain that's making things morally good or bad in a moral sense. It's got to be something else.

[Gary Childress]

I would say pain = bad, hands down.

Some pain probably is bad. But it's not badness, if you can catch the difference.

That is, "bad" might be an adjective that can sometimes, or even often, be applied to situations involving pain. But it's not at all the case that the presence of pain entails that what is going on is morally bad. Like I say: birth, learning, exercise, becoming wise, aging, heroism...all inevitably involve pain...but those things remain good. Likewise, theft, embezzlement, brutality, selfishness...all kinds of things may be pain-free to the perpetrator, and even delightful to him or her, but that doesn't imply they therefore are morally good. I doubt you can regard that as controversial.

So clearly, it's not the presence of pain that's making things morally good or bad in a moral sense. It's got to be something else.

Pain is not bad in the sense that the words are interchangeable. No. However, it is bad in the sense that it has that property to us. Any of those things above can also be accomplished without pain, especially as technology has improved. Birth can be done without pain. We don't say that a non-painful birth is less good than a painful one. Pain is an attribute. It's an attribute that humans almost universally avoid. Why, because pain is a bad thing.

[Immanuel Can]

Pain is not bad in the sense that the words are interchangeable.

That's the point. Pain is not what makes things "good" or bad." So one cannot construct a moral system out of pain-denigrating...or pleasure-affirming. Utilitarianism and other such "hedonic" ethics are therefore dead.

[Gary Childress]

Pain is not bad in the sense that the words are interchangeable.

That's the point. Pain is not what makes things "good" or bad." So one cannot construct a moral system out of pain-denigrating...or pleasure-affirming. Utilitarianism and other such "hedonic" ethics are therefore dead.

One can certainly say that pain makes a thing worse than it would be without it. In that sense, it adds a bad characteristic to something that causes it. I don't see many people denying that pain is a bad thing. If the same thing could be accomplished without pain, then it would be preferable. It seems to me that one can get pretty far in a pretty consistent way, constructing a moral system that is centered around avoiding inflicting pain on others, where it is avoidable, or bringing pleasure to others where it is possible. Of course, there are conflicts in some cases. For example, giving birth may very well be of higher value than the pain associated with it takes away from it. But it would still be better without pain, if possible. The world is not a perfect place, and there are often tradeoffs imposed by reality. That doesn't mean we should not seek to remove that pain if it will still yield satisfactory results in spite of the lack of pain.

[Immanuel Can]

Pain is not bad in the sense that the words are interchangeable.

That's the point. Pain is not what makes things "good" or bad." So one cannot construct a moral system out of pain-denigrating...or pleasure-affirming. Utilitarianism and other such "hedonic" ethics are therefore dead.

One can certainly say that pain makes a thing worse than it would be without it.

But what does "worse," in that sentence actually mean? It's not a moral quality. It might signal one's emotional state, perhaps...but when did the world guarantee you that it would never offend your emotions? It certainly doesn't mean "morally bad," which is what this thread is about.

[Gary Childress]

That's the point. Pain is not what makes things "good" or bad." So one cannot construct a moral system out of pain-denigrating...or pleasure-affirming. Utilitarianism and other such "hedonic" ethics are therefore dead.

One can certainly say that pain makes a thing worse than it would be without it.

But what does "worse," in that sentence actually mean? It's not a moral quality. It might signal one's emotional state, perhaps...but when did the world guarantee you that it would never offend your emotions? It certainly doesn't mean "morally bad," which is what this thread is about.

Pain seems morally bad to me when a person inflicts it on another unjustifiably. Does it not seem that way to you?

[Immanuel Can]

One can certainly say that pain makes a thing worse than it would be without it.

But what does "worse," in that sentence actually mean? It's not a moral quality. It might signal one's emotional state, perhaps...but when did the world guarantee you that it would never offend your emotions? It certainly doesn't mean "morally bad," which is what this thread is about.

Pain seems morally bad to me when a person inflicts it on another unjustifiably. Does it not seem that way to you?

From a secular perspective, there's nothing that can be morally bad. I don't share that view, and I admit that it is one of many things that makes me glad not to be a secularist.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

To the OP, I don't know anybody who rejects morality absolutely. By a country mile. Everyone I know has a sense of fairness, of not doing harm, to themselves first. The majority, most of the time, to a remarkable extent, don't harm others either. Those are the first, and universal, evolved, moral taste receptors; care/harm, fairness/cheating. All higher animals exhibit them. Even most criminals, social predators, aren't violent, in civil societies. The vast majority of humanity go beyond those minima with Jonathan Haidt's loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, sanctity/degradation and liberty/oppression moral foundations. Even secular liberals! In the name of these secondary foundations, often with religious - sanctity - connotations, greater harm and unfairness, social injustice (which is harmful) are politically, morally justified. We cheat the poor.

[Gary Childress]

But what does "worse," in that sentence actually mean? It's not a moral quality. It might signal one's emotional state, perhaps...but when did the world guarantee you that it would never offend your emotions? It certainly doesn't mean "morally bad," which is what this thread is about.

Pain seems morally bad to me when a person inflicts it on another unjustifiably. Does it not seem that way to you?

From a secular perspective, there's nothing that can be morally bad. I don't share that view, and I admit that it is one of many things that makes me glad not to be a secularist.

I don't share that view either and neither do all secularists. I'm not convinced that morality can't be understood by secularism. I think you're creating a very shallow and unfair interpretation of secularism.

[ThinkOfOne]

Pain seems morally bad to me when a person inflicts it on another unjustifiably. Does it not seem that way to you?

From a secular perspective, there's nothing that can be morally bad. I don't share that view, and I admit that it is one of many things that makes me glad not to be a secularist.

I don't share that view either and neither do all secularists. I'm not convinced that morality can't be understood by secularism. I think you're creating a very shallow and unfair interpretation of secularism.

In my experience, since Christianity is built upon a foundation of sand, Christian apologists routinely create straw men, present double standards, etc. A never-ending parade of logical fallacies often capped by willful ignorance. If it were built on truth (a solid foundation), this would not be the case.