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MikeNovack wrote: ↑Mon Apr 20, 2026 9:01 pm
Good grief --- I was NOT proposing an answer. I clearly said an example answer, then proceeded to why better thought of in terms of a relation.You could substitute any other traditional answer.
On the one hand, "answer" and "example answer" seems a bit potAYto potAHto when your "relation" based answer incorporates the assumption presented in that "example answer". Unless of course your second answer is also not an answer. Perhaps it is an indicative thrust in the general direction of a secondary example answer?
On the other hand, we know all those traditional answers, they've cropped up before. You'll have a similar problem with every single one of them. You'll be wanting to leave space for an exploratory consideration of a proposed suggestion for the outline of the concept of a potential answer if you go that route.
I've run out of hands, so on the one foot, I'm not sure that you actually made any case for why this thing is "better" thought of in terms of a relation, it looks like you just decided you like that sort of thing and are hoping everyone agrees. Sadly, that phantasm of the outline of the hypothesized suggestion that perhaps there might be an answer does no heavy lifting. As both phyllo and I have pointed out what it does do is kick a can down the road.
Ollie.ha wrote: ↑Sun Apr 19, 2026 1:02 am
Have you ever been asked “what’s good”?
Next time I get asked this I want a legitimate answer.
So, “what’s good”
One possible approach is to say that a good thing is a thing that fulfils its purpose. A good chair is a chair that is comfortable to sit on. A good painting is one that is beautiful or inspiring or thought-provoking to look at. A good horse (from the point of view of a punter betting on a race) is one that is quick, able to take the jumps smoothly and not likely to throw its jockey.
Conversely a bad chair is one that is riddled with woodworm and collapses when you sit on it, because such a chair cannot fulfil its intended purpose.
Things get trickier when you ask "what is a good human being?", due to the lack of an agreed purpose.
Ollie.ha wrote: ↑Sun Apr 19, 2026 1:02 am
Have you ever been asked “what’s good”?
Next time I get asked this I want a legitimate answer.
So, “what’s good”
One possible approach is to say that a good thing is a thing that fulfils its purpose. A good chair is a chair that is comfortable to sit on. A good painting is one that is beautiful or inspiring or thought-provoking to look at. A good horse (from the point of view of a punter betting on a race) is one that is quick, able to take the jumps smoothly and not likely to throw its jockey.
Conversely a bad chair is one that is riddled with woodworm and collapses when you sit on it, because such a chair cannot fulfil its intended purpose.
Things get trickier when you ask "what is a good human being?", due to the lack of an agreed purpose.
A good slave is one that follows orders.
A good genocide is one that wipes out an entire people.
A good sexually transmitted disease is one that rots your cock all the way off.
Well, that certainly fits with the way the word is actually used, yes. Not sure about that last one. Unless it was being said by some maniac running a government biological weapons lab.
Radagast wrote: ↑Tue Apr 21, 2026 12:05 am
Well, that certainly fits with the way the word is actually used, yes. Not sure about that last one. Unless it was being said by some maniac running a government biological weapons lab.
The logic that "a good thing is a thing that fulfils its purpose" either works in both directions, because anything that fulfils its purpose being instrumentally good, or it fails.
The problem of course is that being instrumentally good for a purpose is all very well for an implement, but not so much for the moral agent wielding it. A perfectly designed tool of evil is instrumentally good, but morally bad. The man who uses a perfectly design genital torture battery is a bad man with a good tool.
To be good at being a chair probably makes for a good chair in most cases. To be good at being an electric chair is somewhat less so. So much as Mike's solution looks nice, but is actually kicking the can down the road, I'm afraid yours requires that the good thing is good for a purpose that must itself also be good.
MikeNovack wrote: ↑Sun Apr 19, 2026 3:00 pm
But maybe, in practice, what we need is the relation "better than" as in "A is better than B". This might be sufficient to our needs and let us duck difficult issues around the good/best. Those issues clearer once we start with"better than"
IS there a "best"? Is there some A such that there exists no B better than A? Walker: Sure. The best is a conceptual ideal to support judgments of bad. It need not be defined, and it can exist as hope.
If there is, does now mean always? If A is the best NOW, after you have lots of A or had a for a long time, is it necessarily still the best. Walker: No. Time changes prime.
