First get straight: good literally objectively does mean desirable.
It’s not at all clear that morally good means desirable. The idea that the good is the desirable gets what force it has from the fact that “good” has a lot of nonmoral meanings. Good ice cream is desirable ice cream, but what’s that got to do with ethics?
Morally good means what it is good to do. So there is something added to “good” to get morally good—namely it is what it is good all things considered, and good to do, as opposed to good in other ways that have nothing to do with doing.
It if it would be good to eat ice cream at the moment, eating ice cream is morally good. And if it would be bad to eat ice cream at the moment, eating ice cream is morally bad.
But when you say “good ice cream,” you aren’t talking about what it is good to do, so you aren’t talking about morality. Sometimes it is good to eat bad ice cream (e.g. you have been offered it in a situation where it would be rude to refuse), and then it is morally good to eat the bad ice cream, and sometimes it is bad to eat good ice cream (e.g. you have already eaten too much), and then it is morally bad to eat the good ice cream.
Morally good means what it is good to do. So there is something added to “good” to get morally good—namely it is what it is good all things considered, and good to do, as opposed to good in other ways that have nothing to do with doing.
That’s a theory of what “morally” is adding to “good”. You need to defend it against alternatives, rather than stating it as if it were obvious.
It if it would be good to eat ice cream at the moment, eating ice cream is morally good.
Are you sure? How many people agree with that? Do you have independent evidence , or are you just following through the consequences of your assumptions (ie arguing in circles)?
I think most people would say that it doesn’t matter if you eat ice cream or not, and in that sense they might say it is morally indifferent. However, while I agree that it mainly doesn’t matter, I think they are either identifying “non-morally obligatory” with indifferent here, or else taking something that doesn’t matter much, and speaking as though it doesn’t matter at all.
But I think that most people would agree that gluttony is a vice, and that implies that there is an opposite virtue, which would mean eating the right amount and at the right time and so on. And eating ice cream when it is good to eat ice cream would be an act of that virtue.
Would you agree that discussion about “morally good” is discussion about what we ought to do? It seems to me this is obviously what we are talking about. And we should do things that are good to do, and avoid doing things that are bad to do. So if “morally good” is about what we should do, then “morally good” means something it is good to do.
I think most people would say that it doesn’t matter if you eat ice cream or not, and in that sense they might say it is morally indifferent. However, while I agree that it mainly doesn’t matter, I think they are either identifying “non-morally obligatory” with indifferent here, or else taking something that doesn’t matter much, and speaking as though it doesn’t matter at all.
What is wrong with saying it doesn’t matter at all?
But I think that most people would agree that gluttony is a vice, and that implies that there is an opposite virtue, which would mean eating the right amount and at the right time and so on. And eating ice cream when it is good to eat ice cream would be an act of that virtue
That’s pretty much changing the subject.
Would you agree that discussion about “morally good” is discussion about what we ought to do?
And we should do things that are good to do, and avoid doing things that are bad to do
I think it is about what we morally ought to do. If you are playing chess, you ought to move the bishop diagonally,
but that is again non-moral.
We morally-should do what is morally good, and hedonistically-should do what is hedonotsitcally-good, and so on. These can conflict, so they are not the same.
Talking about gluttony and temperance was not changing the subject. Most people think that morally good behavior is virtuous behavior, and morally bad behavior vicious behavior. So that implies that gluttony is morally bad, and temperance morally good. And if eating too much ice cream can be gluttony, then eating the right amount can be temperance, and so morally good.
There is a lot wrong with saying “it doesn’t matter at all”, but basically you would not bother with eating ice cream unless you had some reason for it, and any reason would contribute to making it a good thing to do.
I disagree completely with your statements about should, which do not correspond with any normal usage. No one talks about “hedonistically should.”
To reduce this to its fundamentals:
“I should do something” means the same thing as “I ought to do something”, which means the same thing as “I need to do something, in order to accomplish something else.”
Now if we can put whatever we want for “something else” at the end there, then you can have your “hedonistically should” or “chess playing should” or whatever.
But when we are talking about morality, that “something else” is “doing what is good to do.” So “what should I do?” has the answer “whatever you need to do, in order to be doing something good to do, rather than something bad to do.”
Talking about gluttony and temperance was not changing the subject. Most people think that morally good behavior is virtuous behavior, and morally bad behavior vicious behavior. So that implies that gluttony is morally bad, and temperance morally good. And if eating too much ice cream can be gluttony, then eating the right amount can be temperance, and so morally good.
It’s changing the subject because you are switching from an isolated act to a pattern of behaviour.
There is a lot wrong with saying “it doesn’t matter at all”,
Such as?
but basically you would not bother with eating ice cream unless you had some reason for it, and any reason would contribute to making it a good thing to do.
You are using good to mean morally good again.
I disagree completely with your statements about should, which do not correspond with any normal usage. No one talks about “hedonistically should.”
You can’t infer the non-existence of a distinction from the fact that it is not regularly marked in ordinary language.
“Jade is an ornamental rock. The term jade is applied to two different metamorphic rocks that are composed of different silicate minerals:
Nephrite consists of a microcrystalline interlocking fibrous matrix of the calcium, magnesium-iron rich amphibole mineral series tremolite (calcium-magnesium)-ferroactinolite (calcium-magnesium-iron). The middle member of this series with an intermediate composition is called actinolite (the silky fibrous mineral form is one form of asbestos). The higher the iron content, the greener the colour.
Jadeite is a sodium- and aluminium-rich pyroxene. The precious form of jadeite jade is a microcrystalline interlocking growth of jadeite crystals.""
“I should do something” means the same thing as “I ought to do something”, which means the same thing as “I need to do something, in order to accomplish something else.”
So you say. Actually, the idea that ethical claims can be cashed out as hypotheticals is quite contentious.
Now if we can put whatever we want for “something else” at the end there, then you can have your “hedonistically should” or “chess playing should” or whatever.
But when we are talking about morality, that “something else” is “doing what is good to do.” So “what should I do?” has the answer “whatever you need to do, in order to be doing something good to do, rather than something bad to do.”
Back to the usual problem. What you morally-should do is whatever you need to do, in order to be doing something morally good, is true but vacuous. . What you morally-should do is whatever you need to do, in order to be doing something good is debatable.
The point about the words is that it is easy to see from their origins that they are about hypothetical necessity. You NEED to do something. You MUST do it. You OUGHT to do it, that is you OWE it and you MUST pay your debt. All of that says that something has to happen, that is, that it is somehow necessary.
Now suppose you tell a murderer, “It is necessary for you to stop killing people.” He can simply say, “Necessary, is it?” and then kill you. Obviously it is not necessary, since he can do otherwise. So what did you mean by calling it necessary? You meant it was necessary for some hypothesis.
I agree that some people disagree with this. They are not listening to themselves talk.
The reason that moral good means doing something good, is that the hypothesis that we always care about, is whether it would be good to do something. That gives you a reason to say “it is necessary” without saying for what, because everyone wants to do something that would be good to do.
Suppose you define moral goodness to be something else. Then it might turn out that it would be morally bad to do something that would be good to do, and morally good to do something that would be bad to do. But in that case, who would say that we ought to do the thing which is morally good, instead of the thing that would be good to do? They would say we should do the thing that would be good to do, again precisely because it is necessary, and therefore we MUST do the supposedly morally bad thing, in order to be doing something good to do.
Now suppose you tell a murderer, “It is necessary for you to stop killing people.” He can simply say, “Necessary, is it?” and then kill you. Obviously it is not necessary, since he can do otherwise. So what did you mean by calling it necessary? You meant it was necessary for some hypothesis.
You are assuming that the only thing that counts as necessity per se is physical necessity, ie there is no physical possiibity of doing otherwise. But moral necessity is more naturally cashed out as the claim that there is no permissable state of affairs in which the murdered can murder.
In less abstract terms, what we are saying is that morality does not work like a common-or-garden in-order-to-achieve-X-do-Y. because you cannot excuse yourself , or obtain permissibility, simply by stating that you have some end in mind other than being moral. Even without logical necessity, morality has social obligatoriness, and that needs to be explained, and a vanilla account in terms of hypotetical necessities in order to achieve arbtrary ends cannot do that.
The reason that moral good means doing something good, is that the hypothesis that we always care about, is whether it would be good to do something.
If the moral good were just a rubber-stamp of approval for whatever we have in our utility functions, there would
be no need for morality as a behaviour-shaping factor in human society. Morality is not “do what thou wilt”.
That gives you a reason to say “it is necessary” without saying for what, because everyone wants to do something that would be good to do.
In some sense of “good”, but, as usual, an unqualified “good” does not give you plausible morality.
Suppose you define moral goodness to be something else. Then it might turn out that it would be morally bad to do something that would be good to do, and morally good to do something that would be bad to do. But in that case, who would say that we ought to do the thing which is morally good, instead of the thing that would be good to do?
It’s tautologous that we morally-should do what is morally-good.
The “no permissible state of affairs” idea is also hypothetical necessity: “you must do this, if we want a situation which we call permissible.”
As I think I have stated previously, the root of this disagreement is that you believe, like Eliezer, that reality is indifferent in itself. I do not believe that.
In particular, I said that good things tend to make us desire them. You said I had causality reversed there. But I did not: I had it exactly right. Consider survival, which is an obvious case of something good. Does the fact that we desire something, e.g. eating food instead of rocks, make it into something that makes us survive? Or rather, is the fact that it makes us survive the cause of the fact that we desire it? It is obvious from how evolution works that the latter is the case and not the former. So the fact that eating food is good is the cause of the fact that we desire it.
I said the basic moral question is whether it would be good to do something. You say that this is putting a “rubber-stamp of approval for whatever we have in our utility functions.” This is only the case, according to your misunderstanding of the relationship between desire and good. Good things tend to make us desire them. But just because there is a tendency, does not mean it always works out. Things tend to fall, but they don’t fall if someone catches them. And similarly good things tend to make us desire them, but once in a while that fails to work out and someone desires something bad instead. So saying “do whatever is good to do,” is indeed morality, but it definitely does not mean “do whatever thou wilt.”
I don’t care about “morally-should” as opposed to what I should do. I think I should do whatever would be good to do; and if that’s different from what you call moral, that’s too bad for you.
The “no permissible state of affairs” idea is also hypothetical necessity: “you must do this, if we want a situation which we call permissible.”
I still don’t think you have made a good case for morality being hypothetical, since you haven’t made a case against the case against. And I still think you need to explain obligatoriness.
In particular, I said that good things tend to make us desire them. You said I had causality reversed there. But I did not: I had it exactly right. Consider survival, which is an obvious case of something good.
Survival is good, you say. If I am in a position to ensure my survival by sacrificing Smith, is it morally good to do so? After all Smith’s survival is just as Good as mine.
I don’t care about “morally-should” as opposed to what I should do.
Doens’t-care is made to care. If you don’t behave as though you care about morality, society will punish you.
However. it won’t punish you for failing to fulfil other shoulds.
I didn’t see any good case against morality being hypothetical, not even in that article.
I did explain obligatoriness. It is obligatory to do something morally good because we don’t have a choice about wanting to do something good. Everyone wants to do that, and the only way you can do that is by doing something morally good.
I did said I do not care about morally-should “as opposed” to what I should do. It could sometimes happen that I should not do something because people will punish me if I do it. In other words, I do care about what I should do, and that is determined by what would be good to do.
I did explain obligatoriness. It is obligatory to do something morally good because we don’t have a choice about wanting to do something good. Everyone wants to do that,
From which it follows that nobody ever fails to do what is morally good, and that their inevitable moral goodness is th result of inner psychological compulsion, not outer systems of reward and punishment, and that no systems of reward and punishment systems were ever necessary. All of that is clearly false.
and the only way you can do that is by doing something morally good.
Unless there are non-moral gods, which there clearly are,since there are immoral and amoral acts committed to obtain them.
“From which it follows that nobody ever fails to do what is morally good”
No, it does not, unless you assume that people are never mistaken about what would be good to do. I already said that people are sometimes mistaken about this, and think that it would be good to do something, when it would be bad to do it. In those cases they fail to do what is morally good.
I agree there are non-moral goods, e.g. things like pleasure and money and so on. That is because a moral good is “doing something good”, and pleasure and money are not doing anything. But people who commit immoral acts in order to obtain those goods, also believe that they are doing something good, but they are mistaken.
It’s not at all clear that morally good means desirable. The idea that the good is the desirable gets what force it has from the fact that “good” has a lot of nonmoral meanings. Good ice cream is desirable ice cream, but what’s that got to do with ethics?
Morally good means what it is good to do. So there is something added to “good” to get morally good—namely it is what it is good all things considered, and good to do, as opposed to good in other ways that have nothing to do with doing.
It if it would be good to eat ice cream at the moment, eating ice cream is morally good. And if it would be bad to eat ice cream at the moment, eating ice cream is morally bad.
But when you say “good ice cream,” you aren’t talking about what it is good to do, so you aren’t talking about morality. Sometimes it is good to eat bad ice cream (e.g. you have been offered it in a situation where it would be rude to refuse), and then it is morally good to eat the bad ice cream, and sometimes it is bad to eat good ice cream (e.g. you have already eaten too much), and then it is morally bad to eat the good ice cream.
That’s a theory of what “morally” is adding to “good”. You need to defend it against alternatives, rather than stating it as if it were obvious.
Are you sure? How many people agree with that? Do you have independent evidence , or are you just following through the consequences of your assumptions (ie arguing in circles)?
I think most people would say that it doesn’t matter if you eat ice cream or not, and in that sense they might say it is morally indifferent. However, while I agree that it mainly doesn’t matter, I think they are either identifying “non-morally obligatory” with indifferent here, or else taking something that doesn’t matter much, and speaking as though it doesn’t matter at all.
But I think that most people would agree that gluttony is a vice, and that implies that there is an opposite virtue, which would mean eating the right amount and at the right time and so on. And eating ice cream when it is good to eat ice cream would be an act of that virtue.
Would you agree that discussion about “morally good” is discussion about what we ought to do? It seems to me this is obviously what we are talking about. And we should do things that are good to do, and avoid doing things that are bad to do. So if “morally good” is about what we should do, then “morally good” means something it is good to do.
What is wrong with saying it doesn’t matter at all?
That’s pretty much changing the subject.
I think it is about what we morally ought to do. If you are playing chess, you ought to move the bishop diagonally, but that is again non-moral.
We morally-should do what is morally good, and hedonistically-should do what is hedonotsitcally-good, and so on. These can conflict, so they are not the same.
Talking about gluttony and temperance was not changing the subject. Most people think that morally good behavior is virtuous behavior, and morally bad behavior vicious behavior. So that implies that gluttony is morally bad, and temperance morally good. And if eating too much ice cream can be gluttony, then eating the right amount can be temperance, and so morally good.
There is a lot wrong with saying “it doesn’t matter at all”, but basically you would not bother with eating ice cream unless you had some reason for it, and any reason would contribute to making it a good thing to do.
I disagree completely with your statements about should, which do not correspond with any normal usage. No one talks about “hedonistically should.”
To reduce this to its fundamentals:
“I should do something” means the same thing as “I ought to do something”, which means the same thing as “I need to do something, in order to accomplish something else.”
Now if we can put whatever we want for “something else” at the end there, then you can have your “hedonistically should” or “chess playing should” or whatever.
But when we are talking about morality, that “something else” is “doing what is good to do.” So “what should I do?” has the answer “whatever you need to do, in order to be doing something good to do, rather than something bad to do.”
It’s changing the subject because you are switching from an isolated act to a pattern of behaviour.
Such as?
You are using good to mean morally good again.
You can’t infer the non-existence of a distinction from the fact that it is not regularly marked in ordinary language.
“Jade is an ornamental rock. The term jade is applied to two different metamorphic rocks that are composed of different silicate minerals:
So you say. Actually, the idea that ethical claims can be cashed out as hypotheticals is quite contentious.
Back to the usual problem. What you morally-should do is whatever you need to do, in order to be doing something morally good, is true but vacuous. . What you morally-should do is whatever you need to do, in order to be doing something good is debatable.
The point about the words is that it is easy to see from their origins that they are about hypothetical necessity. You NEED to do something. You MUST do it. You OUGHT to do it, that is you OWE it and you MUST pay your debt. All of that says that something has to happen, that is, that it is somehow necessary.
Now suppose you tell a murderer, “It is necessary for you to stop killing people.” He can simply say, “Necessary, is it?” and then kill you. Obviously it is not necessary, since he can do otherwise. So what did you mean by calling it necessary? You meant it was necessary for some hypothesis.
I agree that some people disagree with this. They are not listening to themselves talk.
The reason that moral good means doing something good, is that the hypothesis that we always care about, is whether it would be good to do something. That gives you a reason to say “it is necessary” without saying for what, because everyone wants to do something that would be good to do.
Suppose you define moral goodness to be something else. Then it might turn out that it would be morally bad to do something that would be good to do, and morally good to do something that would be bad to do. But in that case, who would say that we ought to do the thing which is morally good, instead of the thing that would be good to do? They would say we should do the thing that would be good to do, again precisely because it is necessary, and therefore we MUST do the supposedly morally bad thing, in order to be doing something good to do.
You are assuming that the only thing that counts as necessity per se is physical necessity, ie there is no physical possiibity of doing otherwise. But moral necessity is more naturally cashed out as the claim that there is no permissable state of affairs in which the murdered can murder.
http://www.hsu.edu/academicforum/2000-2001/2000-1AFThe%20Logic%20of%20Morality.pdf
In less abstract terms, what we are saying is that morality does not work like a common-or-garden in-order-to-achieve-X-do-Y. because you cannot excuse yourself , or obtain permissibility, simply by stating that you have some end in mind other than being moral. Even without logical necessity, morality has social obligatoriness, and that needs to be explained, and a vanilla account in terms of hypotetical necessities in order to achieve arbtrary ends cannot do that.
If the moral good were just a rubber-stamp of approval for whatever we have in our utility functions, there would be no need for morality as a behaviour-shaping factor in human society. Morality is not “do what thou wilt”.
In some sense of “good”, but, as usual, an unqualified “good” does not give you plausible morality.
It’s tautologous that we morally-should do what is morally-good.
The “no permissible state of affairs” idea is also hypothetical necessity: “you must do this, if we want a situation which we call permissible.”
As I think I have stated previously, the root of this disagreement is that you believe, like Eliezer, that reality is indifferent in itself. I do not believe that.
In particular, I said that good things tend to make us desire them. You said I had causality reversed there. But I did not: I had it exactly right. Consider survival, which is an obvious case of something good. Does the fact that we desire something, e.g. eating food instead of rocks, make it into something that makes us survive? Or rather, is the fact that it makes us survive the cause of the fact that we desire it? It is obvious from how evolution works that the latter is the case and not the former. So the fact that eating food is good is the cause of the fact that we desire it.
I said the basic moral question is whether it would be good to do something. You say that this is putting a “rubber-stamp of approval for whatever we have in our utility functions.” This is only the case, according to your misunderstanding of the relationship between desire and good. Good things tend to make us desire them. But just because there is a tendency, does not mean it always works out. Things tend to fall, but they don’t fall if someone catches them. And similarly good things tend to make us desire them, but once in a while that fails to work out and someone desires something bad instead. So saying “do whatever is good to do,” is indeed morality, but it definitely does not mean “do whatever thou wilt.”
I don’t care about “morally-should” as opposed to what I should do. I think I should do whatever would be good to do; and if that’s different from what you call moral, that’s too bad for you.
I still don’t think you have made a good case for morality being hypothetical, since you haven’t made a case against the case against. And I still think you need to explain obligatoriness.
Survival is good, you say. If I am in a position to ensure my survival by sacrificing Smith, is it morally good to do so? After all Smith’s survival is just as Good as mine.
Doens’t-care is made to care. If you don’t behave as though you care about morality, society will punish you. However. it won’t punish you for failing to fulfil other shoulds.
I didn’t see any good case against morality being hypothetical, not even in that article.
I did explain obligatoriness. It is obligatory to do something morally good because we don’t have a choice about wanting to do something good. Everyone wants to do that, and the only way you can do that is by doing something morally good.
I did said I do not care about morally-should “as opposed” to what I should do. It could sometimes happen that I should not do something because people will punish me if I do it. In other words, I do care about what I should do, and that is determined by what would be good to do.
From which it follows that nobody ever fails to do what is morally good, and that their inevitable moral goodness is th result of inner psychological compulsion, not outer systems of reward and punishment, and that no systems of reward and punishment systems were ever necessary. All of that is clearly false.
Unless there are non-moral gods, which there clearly are,since there are immoral and amoral acts committed to obtain them.
“From which it follows that nobody ever fails to do what is morally good”
No, it does not, unless you assume that people are never mistaken about what would be good to do. I already said that people are sometimes mistaken about this, and think that it would be good to do something, when it would be bad to do it. In those cases they fail to do what is morally good.
I agree there are non-moral goods, e.g. things like pleasure and money and so on. That is because a moral good is “doing something good”, and pleasure and money are not doing anything. But people who commit immoral acts in order to obtain those goods, also believe that they are doing something good, but they are mistaken.