(June 9, 2018 at 5:53 am)Khemikal Wrote:(June 9, 2018 at 12:16 am)vulcanlogician Wrote: I would take issue with the word "decide." If it's an objective thing you would actually be discerning or figuring out what is good. You don't decide that earth revolves around the sun. It is an objective truth. You use observation and reason to figure it out. In much the same way, you must use logic and reason to discern objective goods. The figure most associated with the idea of objective goods is probably Plato.No love for aristotle? Most of our current ethical theories on objective goods are aristotelian rather than platonist. His ethics seek to arrive at the same conclusions as platos..but without the burden of those elaborate metaphysics. I;d give him pride of place if I was associating people with objective goods. Platos objective goods only existed in order to support his metaphysics..upon which they were predicated.
OTOH, Aristotle only broke that vicious circularity by refusing to address it in the first place. Discussions of goodness and virtue only mean something to people who already possess knowledge of those things, to whatever degree. I suppose that;s not intellectually satisfying, but it could very well be true. It may be impossible to explain "what is good" to a person who has no prior concept of good. Like so many "what's wrong with rape" threads.....if somebodies asking the question....and not in a half assed edgelord kind of way, you can be pretty damned certain that nothing you tell them will ever explain whats wrong with rape.
That;s what springs to my mind, in any case, everytime one of these "how can we determine an objective standard for goodness" threads crops up. Either you can or you can;t..but if you really cant....it;s probably a you problem, not a "we" problem.
(we're shamelessly stealing your food pron thread chimp)
1) So first off, I don't really have enough knowledge of Ari to comfortably refer to him when speaking of objective goodness. Aristotle is a real gap in my knowledge concerning Greek philosophy. Why? I think you summed it up pretty well already. I have "No love for Aristotle." I hate reading the guy. I mean, I've picked up plenty of knowledge concerning him in my travels. I've imbibed some secondhand accounts of his virtue ethics, which I liked a lot. But I don't know him all that well.
2) Sure, one way to approach Plato is to see his philosophy as founded on his metaphysics. He certainly presents it that way. This is the "textbook" interpretation of Plato, and the way that most have understood Plato for centuries. But it's not the only way to read him. Many scholars, notably Julia Annas, emphasize Plato's Socratic approach--his adherence to the dialectic--something that is easy to ignore when one apprehends Plato's philosophy as a doctrine, which I don't. Forget about Plato's boilerplate metaphysics for a moment, and think of the forms as an epistemological framework. To use an example from the Republic, the physician studies the form of medicine. That is to say, that there is a "best way" to be a physician. Actual physicians have varying degrees of familiarity with this form. (ie some doctors suck, others know what they are doing). Likewise, there is a way of knowing this form of goodness. And a person is a good or evil person according to varying degrees of knowledge of the form of goodness. There is no reliance on wonky metaphysics here. I simply agree with Plato that there is a such thing as the truth. And while there are varying degrees of familiarity with the truth, you either know it or you don't. It isn't a subjective thing.
