So... we need some more philosophical-like discussion here.

So let's just ramble on philosophically until someone stumbles upon a controversial subject. Once the subject has been established, I'll split out the relevant posts into another topic thread.

Hmm... I'll start with what defines "good." I believe that the concept of good is defined by desire. If you want something, then it's good. If you don't, then it's bad. Can anyone think of any counterexamples?

What about when you have two conflicting desires? Also, don't many people think that lust is usually bad, although many may desire it?

Those that consider lust a bad thing don't want it. They desire less of it.
Conflicting desires lead to conflicting opinions, unless one supercedes the other.

people don't desire lust. Lust = desire. Many of the seven deadly sins, however, deal with wanting. Gluttony is desire of food (love of food, but either way). Think about it that way: maybe wanting is bad.

In that case, people who believe that desire to stop desiring, as contradictory as that is.

owww. my brain hurts.

That theory assumes that people don't want anything they consider bad, which is untrue.

good and bad all depend on the personal views of whoever is speaking. for example, myscrnnm thinks the ps3 is the best consoleon themarket, and many others do not agree.

What's bad that people want?

fatty food if they are on the verge of a heart attack.

I guess it all depends on how you define want. It seems to be that it's either desire or hope.

True, most people consider that bad, and the person eating it probably knows that it's bad in the long term. But it satisfies their desire for it, and in the short term, that makes it good.

In the long term, the person probably wants to stop eating it, and to stop wanting to eat it. This makes it bad, and is another example of contradictory desires and opinions. The person recognizes that satisfying this desire works against things that they want in the future, like to live or look fit. Fatty food is bad because it prevents people from having other things that they want, perhaps that they want more. Therefore, its badness is still defined by desire.

Hmm....

Everybody's perspective iss different on "bad" Does Osama think he's bad? No. Do I? yes.

And everybody's desires are different, or at least manifest themselves differently. Does Osama want to live? Yes, probably. Does he want you to live? Doubtful. Do you want him to live? Doubtful again. Do you want yourself to live? Yes.

but what if i don't want to live? do suicidal people consider killing oneself bad? Or good?
and also consider change of opinions, eg: yesterday my brother was being nice to me. That was good so i thought my brother to be good. Today he is being annoying. I think that is bad and part of me considers my brother to be bad.

I must reject that for it would imply that morality is completely whimsical and arbitrary, and mankind would break down in such a state. It mean that a man with a job who works hard to earn his pay is morally equal with a man who robs banks. Both have a desire for money and therefore are equally good. That is not acceptable.

It's hard to describe in words the morality I follow, but I would say... that which furthers one's own life but does not detriment from others' is "good". The man with a job is therefore "good"; he is doing productive work to earn his living - we have the right to live, BUT life does not AUTOMATICALLY come to us. If we just sit there, we die! One is responsible for furthering his own life. The man is taking responsibility and doing just that; he is "good" (assuming he does not do anything "bad" to maintain/acquire his job). The man who robs banks sees fit to take what he has not earned. It is not his, and if society allows anyone to rob anyone just because they "desire money" in order to live, society would break down, and a state like that is not worth calling "life". Yes, he needs money to live and buy things, but he cannot use force to take it from others. This is "bad".

Edit: Ah, I see, I've gone into MORAL good/bad, which might be better described as good/evil, and I'm not sure if that was your intention for this discussion, for that is different than the perceptual quality of being good or bad (as in, "this tastes good")... I had assumed you meant good/bad in terms of morality, because that was the branch of philosophy I thought of first when I read your quoted statement. Could you clarify as to whether this is about morality or something else?

Well, reality is in the eyes of the beholder. Using something along myncknm's example, the working guy wants money, and he thinks working is "good". The robber thinks stealing is "good" (though these type of people don't show up often) then to him, he is "good". Each individual is equally good to the individual eyes. If a third person with a set of "goodness" closer to the working man's "good" then the scale doesn't balance within the third man's eyes.

For one thing, just because a hypothesis is unfavorable doesn't disprove it. My belief here is that humans have an innate desire to be nice to others, and not to cause pain to others. http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Altruism


It doesn't matter. Anything you might classify as "good" or "bad."

If they think the health risks are outweighed by the taste, then they consider it good, & will probably have some. If they think the health risks outweigh the taste, then they will consider bad, & probably not have any.



I partly agree. I don't think there is a universal good/bad rating. However, the bank robber might feel really guilty, but he has to feed his family SOMEHOW. In this case, the worker, the robber, & the third person all think of the robber as bad compared to the worker. This creates an ALMOST universal good/bad rating.

Even those that love to kill people for fun, right?

Heh. Okay then, almost all humans have an innate desire not to harm others.

That's more like it

Well, Al Qaeda thinks killing innocent civilians is the right thing to do and they will be rewarded in the "second life." They are born and taught to hate Americans for freedom, justice, and liberty. They think it is good. Americans on the other hand think it is bad and they need to stop these things before they happen. They think that civilians have nothing to do with it. We think it is bad.

I do not think we can ever define good or bad. It just went that way from the start, and we went with it up until today.

Al Qaeda's point of view:
Terrorism leads to salvation in heaven. Salvation and heaven are quite desirable things. Therefore terrorism is good. They don't see badness in harming us because they've demonized us, and so are unable to empathize or sympathize with us.

Mmm. First let me say about the qualitative attribute of being good or bad... yes, in cases like this ("This tastes bad", "This music is really good!"), good and bad are subjective and vary with person. In such a case perhaps I can understand the definition of good as being what is desired. There is a distinction between this and ethically/morally good or bad.


I see. Don't forget that this is not only unfavorable but goes against all reason. If the only moral criteron for an action being good or evil is whether the one who does the action desired/desires it or not, how does a society pronounce moral judgement?
Judge: "You have been pronounced guilty for charges of murder!"
Murderer: "I do not submit to your standards of morality! I WANTED to murder those people, so therefore it is morally good! Why would a society punish me for my good deeds?!?! Do you intend to prove to me that I DIDN'T want to murder people after all?!?!"

If morality is arbitrary whim, then how is morality judged in life? Is it a huge fight to see who is better able to FORCE their morality on others?

It does not go against all reason. You're thinking of the consequences on modern values if this were accepted as true. The consequences have nothing to do with whether or not this is actually true.

The job of a government is to enforce the common good. The murderer might see his deeds as good, but the victims would consider it very very very bad if they were still alive, and the vast majority of others would agree with the victims. And morality does vary somewhat from culture to culture. I think polygamy might be an example of that. And some cultures would consider mini-skirts a horrible moral wrong.

Loving the controversy,

maybe miniskirts are a horrible wrong, but could someone be prosecuted for wearing them?

People are inherently evil.

They can under some governments and cultures. Like Medieval Europe, probably. And can someone be persecuted for going completely nude? That's just like miniskirts, just a step or two further.

In our society, that's way worse.

Practically, though. Imagine back to when a woman having her ankles showing was considered very bad. A mini-skirt back then might've been as bad as nude is now.

in some countries if a woman's eyes are showing it's bad... imagine a miniskirt there!

Why the unsupported one-sentence post? In any case, I wouldn't think so. People are born ignorant, with only basic instinctive knowledge required for survival. There may be a disposition toward a certain personality type embedded in genes, but the concept of moral values comes as we learn more about the world, not automatically.



So you are making your statement, blatantly ignoring the consequences of it? Declare the cause, and negate the effect? If the statement is true its consequences (assuming they are correctly defined) are true as well. Moral judgement would be impossible if your statement is true, on the basis of desires being whimsical and arbitrary. However, people have been making moral judgements, so that means the statement cannot be true.

[Edit: Ah, I see. The statement I made supposes that all people judge morality the same way. Then again, if all people can judge morality differently, then either there are some people who are immoral OR morality is once again a matter of who can force their values on others. ]



So then what defines the "common" good? It doesn't seem so common to me if the murderer didn't accept it! Society is merely a sum of the people within it. The "common" good, then, is the morality that garners the most followers? Quantity over quality? When I morally evaluate an action, I must consider only the NUMBER of beneficiaries of the action? The govenment enforces the good "of the society", "of mankind", of (anything except an actual human being)??? I still see this as the forcing of morality (by your definition, desires) onto others. Whose desires are to be forced onto others?



Oh yes. So am I =D

Think the scientific method. A hypothesis isn't rejected just because of the consequences. If a theory turns out to be based on a false hypothesis, what happens? It'd be incorrect to ignore the evidence against the hypothesis just for the sake of the theory; instead the theory is falsified in turn. But this doesn't mean that common morality is wrong.

Hmm... maybe you're right that some people's morality is being forced onto others. But evolution has given almost all people a very similar set of morals. I think actions that cause the most pain are judged the most immoral.

But anyways, if morals don't ultimately come from desires, then where would they come from? If there were no subjective minds to judge what is good or bad, would the concepts of good and bad even exist? Is it wrong to say that actions that cause pain are immoral? But why is pain bad? Because it's something we don't want to feel. Anything wrong with that reasoning?

... wait, you lost me here. Wasn't that an agreement of false conclusion means false hypothesis?



Hmm... I said something about this in an earlier post...



Looking at this again, it still does look a bit... inconclusive, if not flawed in some way. However, I don't think that a morality that is based on desire or whim to be valid, because these things are different for all people, which results in the aforementioned forcing of moral values onto others. It would seem that reason could be what morality would be based off of because it is objective and consistent. Thinking with reason, the highest value of a living organism is its life. Without its life, nothing can be good or bad for it anymore. Morality tells us what values we need for our survival, for our life. That which is consistent with these values and furthers our survival is good; that which does not is bad.

... well, I've never given this a lot of extensive thought, so I'll think more about it. However, I present this to you, to be picked apart.

Also, pain is simply our body's automatic reaction to things that are dangerous or detrimental to us. I wouldn't give it a moral good/bad designation because it's automatic. Morals apply to matters of choice. Qualitatively, however, pain can feel good (for masochists) or bad (for.... non-masochists).

Yes, but there's another way to justify morality. Just because it's based on desires doesn't mean it's whimsical and not important. Our basic human rights... aren't those based on desires?

I've given this sort of thing too much thought. And I will.

Well... it's not all different. We can assume that any given person has a desire to live, for example. Some maybe not.

There's really no way to show something like morals with complete objectivity. To be completely objective, that would involve ignoring any sense of self and humanity and thinking only in terms of the basic laws of the universe, right? The mathematic basis of physics doesn't give much towards ethics. I guess humanity can be taken into account when thinking objectively, but only as derivations from the basic laws of physics. Like how evolution must give each person an innate desire to live and pass his/her genes on.

(Emphasis mine). Doesn't the very word "value" indicate desire? What defines value besides desire? If something is not desired, does it have any value? The desire to live is just that, a desire.

Well, I was thinking more emotional pain... or non-pleasure... whatever. Even masochists must have a limit. Desire not to feel physical pain helps to keep us alive. I mean, if they were skinning themselves because they liked how it felt, they wouldn't be around any longer. Although it might just be that they would enjoy skinning themselves, but don't want to because it would kill them. I really wouldn't know. Would you expect me to?

Ah, I see now! I'm not sure I'm convinced, however. Desire and survival don't perfectly equate in both directions.

True, most humans desire that which is necessary to survive and live. But there are some things that are necessary for life that a human might not desire for whatever reason (perhaps not knowing it is necessary, or some other factors has made him think he does not need it?). As an example take the child who doesn't eat his vegetables because he does not like the way they taste. They're quite necessary for survival; they are a source of nutrients and sustenance, but the boy does not desire them.

In the same vein, there are things unnecessary (or maybe even detrimental!) for life that one might desire. I'll take drug use as an example. The addictive effects and the way they screw with body chemistry, along with numerous other detrimental effects, are certainly contrary to the goal of survival. Perhaps one might desire them for "looking cool" or to fuel an addiction, because one might think that withdrawal will kill them. But in the end, they destroy the body.

What we need to survive is fixed - it is grounded in reality, it is determined by our very nature, and we can't change it; it is objective and consistent. Of course each person is free to choose the exact method by which he ensures his own survival, but there is no way (OK, maybe we'll figure out some way in the future, but that's another topic!) that we could "modify" our bodies to run on gasoline like a car, or by plugging into an electrical outlet, or by photosynthesis and direct absorption from the soil like a plant. True, our instincts tell us to pursue these things that are necessary to live in accordance with our nature... but the interesting thing is, sometimes our desires deviate from these things, which is why I don't see desire as a basis for morality.

Well, the desire must've served some function earlier in evolution if it's so prevalient. Animal meat is generally a better source of energy and protein than plants, so the taste would make it so that if given the choice, the boy would choose to eat meat. In modern Western life today, the boy often has a choice to some extent. In the wild though, more desirable foods probably were not available quite as often, so it was either eat the vegetables, or feel the pain of hunger, and the boy would of course choose to eat the vegetables in that situation.

That's an interesting argument. But drugs didn't exist in the wild again, so, yeah. The way that drugs work is a flaw in the pleasure system that nature developed.

It's not just survival though. If we had no desires, how would we feel about crimes against us? If someone attempted to murder me, but I didn't want to live, then I wouldn't even care. It'd be no loss to me, since I didn't want it anyways. It's the same way with every other crime that I can think of.

You mean those like you?

Good is a personal opinion of ones self. Someone who is evil/bad to one person is good to another and vica vercia. Good is a emotion or a feeling almost.

good = good.
Bad = ungood.
Four legs good.
Two legs bad.
Four legs good.
Two legs BETTER.

It's like the Animal Farm.

She was quoting Orwell. Well, not quite quoting.

i was quoting both animal farm (the sheep chant) and referencing 1985 or whatever the title is...