CIN2 wrote: ↑Tue May 27, 2025 8:39 pm
I define 'bad' as 'providing sufficient reason for an anti-response',
That's a thoroughly unhelpful "definition." If fails to specify what those "reasons" would be, what the "anti-response" would entail, and what would justify calling "reasons" "sufficient." In other words, it says absolutely nothing specific.
I infer that unpleasantness has the property of being bad, which is not the same as saying that 'unpleasant' means the same as 'bad'.
Then it also makes unclear what the real connection between "unpleasant" and "bad" would be. Many things that are "unpleasant" are good...like cough medicine. And things which some people find "pleasant," like theft or adultery, could be "bad."
So you've given nothing that informs us of anything.
There might be grounds for a moral claim against God, if he created childbirth and child-rearing in such a way that they involve unpleasantness.
Only if "unpleasant" and "bad" turn out to be the same, which even you now admit they are not...though even your claim that "unpleasantness" is involved with "badness" remains unclear.
All I am claiming is that unpleasantness is unavoidably disliked.
That's just circular. Being "unpleasant" simply means being "disliked." The "avoidably" is also gratuitous: what would "avoidance" have to do with either?
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 8:09 pm
Secondly, "anti-response." If I have an "anti-response" to something, it's just a feeling I have. Some people have an "anti-response" to homosexuality, and some have a strongly "pro-response" to it: can we solve the question of homosexuality's moral status with reference to how these people feel, when they feel the dead opposite?
Well, to begin with, the question is not whether people have pro- or anti-responses to homosexuality; the question is whether homosexuality
provides sufficient reason for either of these responses.The only things that intrinsically provide sufficient reason for pro- or anti-responses are pleasantness and unpleasantness;
Wait.
If "unpleasantness" "intrinsically provides sufficient reason" for an "anti-response," and that is also your definition of "bad" (see above), then you are saying homosexuality is bad, and "intrinsically" so. And the basis for that would be no more than that some people "unavoidably" feel an "unpleasantness" about it.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 8:09 pmSo what is "bad"? Here, we come to the proposed first conclusion in the chain syllogism you've suggested:
4. Therefore, other things being equal, an action which causes unpleasantness is bad.
What does "bad" mean, in this context now? "Unpleasant"? "Evoking an anti-reaction"?
It means exactly what I say it means in premise 1, i.e. 'provides sufficient reason for an anti-response.'
Which is not informative of anything, since all of the terms you use remain undefined. You've said nothing, essentially. We're no closer to knowing what you mean by "bad" than before, since we can't know what "provides sufficient reason" or "anti-reaction" or "unpleasantness" entail.
It looks like you're plugging for a very weak form of Emotivism, in which your own personal emotions determine whether things are "good" or "bad," and your own sense of "sufficient reasons" is all that's available for us to use in moral reflection: and that's just not good enough for anybody else, is it?
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 8:09 pmI am not claiming that any experience which includes pain is a bad experience. I am claiming that the pain itself (or, more accurately, the unpleasantness of the pain) is bad. This does not preclude the experience as a whole from being good.
Well, since "pain" is an
effect, not a thing-in-itself, we really can't do that, can we? "Pain" is always the product of definite causes and actions, even when we don't happen to know what that cause is (as in the case of a mysterious disease or an unknown malevolence). So how can we say that we have a clear case of "pain" being " bad" in a "pain" that is divorced from all circumstances, since that never happens in real life?
You're suggesting here that my argument needs cases where the pain (or unpleasantness) actually
occurs separately from other festures of the experience.
No. I'm saying the opposite. I'm saying that that is what YOU might need in order to make your case, but you can't have it. Pain is an
effect, but it doesn't tell us the moral quality of the thing with which it comes packaged. Some painful things are good, and some painless things are bad. Pain actually has no ability to tell us anything about the moral situation, or goodness or badness, or justification.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 8:09 pm
Is not the business of morals to weigh off, in fact, whether the pain incurred in a heroic act or a criminal one is "worth it" morally speaking, in that it's still moral/immoral for us to do, regardless of what pain is entailed?
This proves my previous point. You are asking whether the pain,
considered as a distinct property, is morally worth it.
No, I am definitely doing no such thing.
I'm pointing out, rather, that the presence of pain tells us nothing, morally speaking. And that in ethics, we aren't at all concerned with whether or not people happen to like or feel pleasantness about what they're doing; we're only concerned with whether or not what we're asking them to do is RIGHT, even if it causes them pain, or even if it offers any pleasure.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon May 12, 2025 5:33 am
Well, I’m sorry, but tiresome or not, the burden of proof here is on you.
So be it.
Here's just a start:
Utilitarianism, a moral philosophy focused on maximizing overall happiness, faces several criticisms.
I am only defending hedonism, not utilitarianism,
The same critiques still work. You can see that.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Apr 18, 2025 2:06 am
And the anaesthetic heals nothing. Making something painless doesn't make it "right" or "good." A person taking fentanyl will stop feeling pain, but is that morally good? Surely not. And it is likely to end up
increasing his pain later, as well.
It is morally good to give someone fentanyl if (a) the giver does so freely and intentionally, and (b) it is the giver's judgment that this will lead to greater net pleasantness.
Are you asking a question? It needs a question mark, then.
I'd be interested in how you think your moral theory would answer this. That's why I asked.
Of course this judgment may be mistaken, and the fentanyl may lead to net unpleasantness, in which case giving the fentanyl will be morally good (because it was done with a good intention) but instrumentally bad (because it has bad consequences).
So you haven't done anything to resolve the conflict between the theories that hold that "good" means "good intentions," as in Kant, and "good" means "pleasant outcomes or consequences," as per Mill et al. So we can't know whether or not dosing somebody with fentanyl is good or bad. This is what I mean about your theory being totally morally uninformative: we're no more clear on the situation than we were at the start, and your theory has added no useful information to our moral judgment at all.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Apr 18, 2025 2:06 am
By the way, that's a further criticism of the "pleasure-pain" view of ethics: the timeframe. How long do we wait, in order to judge the goodness or badness of something, since there are long-term and short-term pleasures and pains?
You cannot finally judge the goodness or badness of something until it itself and all its after-effects have ceased. That is no criticism of the theory. It's just how things are.
Then it would mean you can't tell anything about goodness or badness until after all the participants are dead. And yes, that would be a very serious -- even terminal -- fault in any such theory. It literally could not inform any living person about the moral status of his/her situation. And it sure won't inform the dead.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Apr 18, 2025 2:06 am
We're back to the old Is-ought controversy here: and to understand that, I can recommend a look at Hume's point about this. We can't get a
moral conclusion from a merely
factual premise.
I don't think Hume actually said this,
Then you need to read Hume. He did. And I linked you an article that quoted not only him but a bunch of other authors reacting to Hume.
I have said nothing about 'ought', so Hume's thoughts about the relation between 'is' and 'ought' are not relevant to my argument. I have talked only about 'good' and 'bad', not about 'ought'.
Are you not even aware that the word "ought" is essential to moral thinking? Ethics is not about what you
feel you want to do, or what
you can be able to do, or what you
find convenient to do. You can know all three without knowing anything about morals or ethics at all...just by consulting your gut or your momentary disposition. But if ethics/morals are real things, then they have to do with what one
should or
ought to do, regardless of one's feelings in the moment.
If we say "It is moral to die for one's family," we are not asking, "Do you want to die?" We aren't asking, "Would you find it pleasant?" We aren't even asking, "Do you want to?" We're saying, instead, that it would be good/noble/courageous/admirable and right to do it, especially if you find it something you'd rather not do, and will be painful and hard, and you wouldn't otherwise do. In other words, something you "ought" to do, not something you feel like doing.
You seem to be assuming that my argument entails a position on 'ought' that I have not stated.
In that, all philosophers of ethics agree. It's you that has no ally on that. "Ought" is the essential term of all ethical/moral reflection...as also suggested by the OP here.
Did you even read the article?
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Apr 18, 2025 2:06 am
Sooner or later you must get to grips properly with my argument.
Done, above.
No. Getting to grips with my argument means doing the following:
1. Checking it for internal validity.
2. Seriously considering whether premise 1 is true or likely to be true, i.e. whether my account of the meaning of 'good' is plausible.
3. If you decide premise 1 is likely to be true, then seriously considering whether premise 2 is true or likely to be true, i.e. whether it is plausible that unpleasantness is an example of what premise 1 is talking about.
You haven't done any of these.
I did them all. And you ignored all I did. If that's what you do, I can't stop you.
...when you say '"pleasant" isn't "good"', you are implying that I claimed that "pleasant" and "good" are synonyms.
No. I'm pointing out that you can't even use "pleasant" as a mere
indicator of goodness. The two are utterly unrelated, and only ever occur in each other's company by accident. That's what I'm pointing out.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 8:09 pm
If the masochist finds the thought of causing himself pain pleasant, that pleasantness is intrinsically good, and the thought that caused the pleasantness is, to that extent, instrumentally good. If he finds the pain pleasant when it arrives, then that pleasantness is also intrinsically good, and the pain that caused it is instrumentally good. If the masochist is morally responsible for his thoughts (which I personally do not believe, because I don't believe in free will) then his thoughts are morally good to the extent that they cause him pleasantness.
Well, I can see you have a firm commitment to your view, though I think it's highly counterintuitive. Most people would not agree to so much, I think, as to believe that a sadist or masochist could be doing "good" to himself or others, simply if he is experiencing "pleasure" in the pain he causes himself or others.
I think that we all instantly recognize the masochist is doing evil to himself (say, carving his wrists with sharp objects, which is one of the things they're known to do), and the sadist is doing evil to others, regardless of the delight he's taking in doing it. And if we think otherwise, I suggest we've voided the words "good" and "bad" of any specific meaning at all...ANYTHING could be "good" or "bad"; and hence, nothing can be specifically either one.
Yes, of course the masochist is doing evil to himself, if we consider the TOTAL value of his action.
Justify that claim. why is he "doing evil"? He likes it. He wants it. He can do it. And he finds it pleasant.
And of course the sadist is doing evil to others,
But he knows exactly what he's doing. And he finds it fun. How do you convince him he
ought not to do it?
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Apr 18, 2025 2:06 am
In which case I will ask you what is effectively the same question as before: do you think that the word 'good' actually MEANS 'that which is consonant and harmonious with the nature and purposes of God'?
Yes, that's its definition. It's the very essence of the good.
This isn't plausible, for three reasons.
1. It would mean that when an atheist says, 'That was a good meal,' he means 'That meal was consonant and harmonious with the nature and purposes of God.'
Are you actually suggesting that when an Atheist says, "That was a good meal," he means it was
morally good?
I'll bet he doesn't. He means by "good" something like "tasty" or "gustatorially fulfilling," or "aesthetically pleasing." He doesn't mean anything moral at all. So there's no such conflict. It's not a morality-implicating situation. The Atheist can have his "good meal" without even involving himself in ethics.
2. If the nature of God changes tonight at midnight, so that torture, rape and murder are then consonant with it and being kind to others is opposed to it, it would mean that tomorrow we would wake up to find that torture, rape and murder had become good overnight, and being kind to others had become bad. But that is not what we would say. We would say that God had become bad overnight — and we would be right.
this is answered simply by the fact that God
does not change His nature. You needed an "if" to get your argument off the ground; but it was an "if" even less possible than, "If I could flap my arms hard enough, I could fly." It's outright impossible. So no, it's not a live criticism. It's not even one that the imagination can fabricate without misunderstanding what the word "God" (in reference to the only God that actually exists) means.
3. If your theory were true, there would be no reason for us to seek what is good. On your theory, seeking what is good would be equivalent to seeking what is consistent with the nature of God. But if I then ask you, 'Why should I seek what is consistent with the nature of God?', either you can give me no reason at all, or, if you say, 'Because the nature of God is good', you are guilty of circularity.
Oh, that's easy to answer. Because the ultimate good of man is fellowship with God. It's both the thing
best for man, and t
he thing for which he was designed. It's good in every possible way, in fact. So you should seek what is consistent with the nature of God so as to be a fit companion for God. And if you seek anything else, you'll only be seeking that which is evil -- that which is all three of, hurtful to you, damaging to your relationship with your Creator, and ultimately defeating of your own whole reason for being in existence.
This parallels the Platonic idea of a realm of eternal forms or mathematical truths, which underlie and shape the physical world.