What’s built in, plausibly, are specific drives (to comfort a crying baby, to take a clear example) whose gratification overlaps what we’re inclined to call good. But these specific drives don’t congeal into a drive to do ethical good: “good” isn’t a natural property.
Now, you could say that “doing good” is just a “far” view of gratifying these specific drives. But I don’t think that’s the way it’s used when someone sets out to “do good,” that is, when they’re making “near” choices.
I would tend to take the position that to “do good” is simply to take actions that satisfy (in the sense of maximizing or satisficing output utility, or some approximation thereof) some fixed function of likely great complexity, which we refer to by the handle “morality.”
Obviously, we only take those actions because of our luck (in a moral sense) in having evolved to be motivated by such a function. And we are strongly motivated by other things as well. But I don’t think it’s reasonable to state that because we are motivated, therefore we are not motivated by morality. Of course, you might call me a moral realist, though I don’t believe that morality is written in the stars.
You can’t disprove something by defining it it to be non-existent. The term “good” very much describes something real (and natural), otherwise we wouldn’t be able to think of it.
Put simply its just the act of fulfilling ourselves, and our purpose. We have a vague notion of good actually is, and are mislead to believe that it doesn’t exist (as in your case), for precisely the very reason that we aren’t perfect at getting what we need. We get what we want, or what we think we want...which is not necessarily that which is full-filling.
As such, we all have a drive to do what is good, in that we all have a drive to lead full-filing lives. Ethics is the problem of actually leading such lives, not the magical creator of some hypothetical property.
The term good, by your description, describes something real and natural. Again by your description, X being “real and natural” is required for being able to think of X.
How does any of this reject the statement that “There is no point in eventspace that has the natural ‘Good’ property”? (which I infer to be the intended meaning of the statement you can “fundamentally wrong”)
That some event, decision, action, thing, X is “good” is a property of the mind, of the map. If there is a Red-Nosed Wiggin in front of you, and knowledge of this fact rates as +2 on your utility function, this is a property of your utility function, not of the Red-Nosed Wiggin or of the spacetime field “in front of you”.
With my understanding of proper or common usage of the term “good”, there is no case where “good” is an inherent property of the territory that is unbreakable, unviolable, and definitely belongs to the territory itself, such that no map could ever model this as “not good” without being testably and verifiably wrong.
(I don’t really expect a response from the author this comment replies to, but would greatly appreciate any help, hints, tips or constructive criticism of some kind on my above reasoning)
The term “good” very much describes something real (and natural), otherwise we wouldn’t be able to think of it.
That doesn’t seem like a consistently valid rule.
As counter-examples, here are some words that we have thought of, and that we can use consistently and appropriately in context, but that do not describe real or natural things:
Unicorn
Witch
Luminiferous aether
Bottomless pit
Immovable object
Irresistible force
Philosopher’s stone
Faster-than-light communication
Ideal gas
Frictionless surface
Spherical cow
Halting oracle
“Yo mama’s so fat she has different area codes for the phones in her left and right pockets”
Built in, like all other drives?
What’s built in, plausibly, are specific drives (to comfort a crying baby, to take a clear example) whose gratification overlaps what we’re inclined to call good. But these specific drives don’t congeal into a drive to do ethical good: “good” isn’t a natural property.
Now, you could say that “doing good” is just a “far” view of gratifying these specific drives. But I don’t think that’s the way it’s used when someone sets out to “do good,” that is, when they’re making “near” choices.
I would tend to take the position that to “do good” is simply to take actions that satisfy (in the sense of maximizing or satisficing output utility, or some approximation thereof) some fixed function of likely great complexity, which we refer to by the handle “morality.”
Obviously, we only take those actions because of our luck (in a moral sense) in having evolved to be motivated by such a function. And we are strongly motivated by other things as well. But I don’t think it’s reasonable to state that because we are motivated, therefore we are not motivated by morality. Of course, you might call me a moral realist, though I don’t believe that morality is written in the stars.
“”good” isn’t a natural property.”
That’s where you’re fundamentally wrong.
You can’t disprove something by defining it it to be non-existent. The term “good” very much describes something real (and natural), otherwise we wouldn’t be able to think of it.
Put simply its just the act of fulfilling ourselves, and our purpose. We have a vague notion of good actually is, and are mislead to believe that it doesn’t exist (as in your case), for precisely the very reason that we aren’t perfect at getting what we need. We get what we want, or what we think we want...which is not necessarily that which is full-filling.
As such, we all have a drive to do what is good, in that we all have a drive to lead full-filing lives. Ethics is the problem of actually leading such lives, not the magical creator of some hypothetical property.
Perhaps you should read (or re-read more carefully) the A Human’s Guide to Words sequence.
The term good, by your description, describes something real and natural. Again by your description, X being “real and natural” is required for being able to think of X.
How does any of this reject the statement that “There is no point in eventspace that has the natural ‘Good’ property”? (which I infer to be the intended meaning of the statement you can “fundamentally wrong”)
That some event, decision, action, thing, X is “good” is a property of the mind, of the map. If there is a Red-Nosed Wiggin in front of you, and knowledge of this fact rates as +2 on your utility function, this is a property of your utility function, not of the Red-Nosed Wiggin or of the spacetime field “in front of you”.
With my understanding of proper or common usage of the term “good”, there is no case where “good” is an inherent property of the territory that is unbreakable, unviolable, and definitely belongs to the territory itself, such that no map could ever model this as “not good” without being testably and verifiably wrong.
(I don’t really expect a response from the author this comment replies to, but would greatly appreciate any help, hints, tips or constructive criticism of some kind on my above reasoning)
That doesn’t seem like a consistently valid rule.
As counter-examples, here are some words that we have thought of, and that we can use consistently and appropriately in context, but that do not describe real or natural things:
Unicorn
Witch
Luminiferous aether
Bottomless pit
Immovable object
Irresistible force
Philosopher’s stone
Faster-than-light communication
Ideal gas
Frictionless surface
Spherical cow
Halting oracle
“Yo mama’s so fat she has different area codes for the phones in her left and right pockets”
One of the better definitions, and the one in accord with Aristotle. Though perhaps not the most popular definition.