Philosophy Now Forum

We are always talking about existence, god, reality, truth _
How about let's begin with goodness. Not to be too Platonic or Socratic, but -
What is 'goodness' ?

Whole-grain goodness and /or the goodness of the soul ?

Goodness is positive,
badness is negative.

Badness makes goodness visible and vice versa.

God created the world and saw that it was good: accomplished, positive, but possibly not perfect.

good is whatever the strong says it is...

-Imp

I believe a good is anything with positive value. A bad thing has negative value. Eg something with instrumental value is good if we need to use it, like a spoon being handy when we eat soup. Or something can have educational value, and if we are in dneed of educating, it is a "good thing". The value of a thing is related to it's desirability and preferability. I think there are certain goods (positives) we are in general forced to believe in, for instance psychological welfare (if in fact this is not a tautology). So I suppose "the good" is an abstraction denoting the concept of positive value.

Impenitent wrote:good is whatever the strong says it is...

-Imp

This may be the case, but it is not necessarily true. What is true is theat in some sense the strong or powerful may have more influence over what is regarded as good. But to say therefore it is good sounds like making goodness claims performative utterances, but I don't think they are. Rather thare are facts which are relebant to ethical claims, just as there are to aesthetic claims or claims about utility.