Good and Evil

[Pyrrho]

I don't think there is anything that is discovered by reason out in the world, that can serve as the foundation of ethics, or that is "the Good," like some Platonic Form.  I rather like what Hume had to say about this in Appendix I of his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, though I will only quote a bit of it here:

I definitely wouldn't want to take things as far as Plato... but in some sense I think he may have been on to something. Aristotle, however, for as much as he got wrong, seemed fairly spot-on to me with his notions of matter/form, particulars/universals, and how he incorporated them into his ethical theory.

Although I have a great deal of respect for Plato, I think he is completely wrong in this matter.  In my opinion, what he has done is confused language with reality, and taken properties of linguistic concepts and reified them.

Our concepts come from our attempts to understand the world.  Our concepts do not dictate what the world is.  When our concepts do not line up with the world, it is our concepts that are in error.  Plato, though, thought our concepts are more real than the world.

But though reason, when fully assisted and improved, be sufficient to instruct us in the pernicious or useful tendency of qualities and actions; it is not alone sufficient to produce any moral blame or approbation. Utility is only a tendency to a certain end; and were the end totally indifferent to us, we should feel the same indifference towards the means. It is requisite a sentiment should here display itself, in order to give a preference to the useful above the pernicious tendencies. This sentiment can be no other than a feeling for the happiness of mankind, and a resentment of their misery; since these are the different ends which virtue and vice have a tendency to promote. Here therefore reason instructs us in the several tendencies of actions, and humanity makes a distinction in favour of those which are useful and beneficial.
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/341#Hume_0222_585

Let me just say a few things about this: The end, if we take it to be something like maximum happiness, is not indifferent to us. In fact, it's difficult to see what else could really matter to a sentient being. Therefore, the means are not indifferent either. I agree with Hume that "this sentiment can be no other than a feeling for the happiness" of sentient beings (and not exclusively mankind, as he suggests), but then I don't see how it is really any different than our conception of "truth" or "scientific principles." When he says that "reason instructs us in the several tendencies of actions, and humanity makes a distinction in favour of those which are useful and beneficial," he could just as easily be talking about the pursuit of truth through the scientific method as he is about the pursuit of the virtues through philosophical inquiry. 

The point is, what gives these things their importance is our feelings about them.  Thus, the basis for their importance is feeling.  In other words, Hume is right.


As for truth and an affection for scientific principles, you really like to bring up diverse subjects all in one place.  Truth is more complex than it appears at first glance, not least because there are different kinds of truth, yet in English (as well as other languages), there is no linguistic indicator of such differences.  To give but one pair of examples, consider the following:

All bachelors are unmarried.

All bachelors are mortal.

The first of these is a tautology, true by virtue of the meanings of the terms, and so it tells us nothing whatever about the world.  The second is a contingent truth, a truth about the world, not true merely from the meanings of the terms.  One can easily imagine a universe in which not all bachelors are mortal.  But one cannot imagine a universe in which not all bachelors are unmarried (sometimes people pretend they can, and they can pretend this by changing the meanings of the terms, but changing the meanings would be talking about something else entirely).

With some kinds of truth, it is the relation between the statement and the world that makes the statement true, though in other kinds of truth, it is the relation between the different concepts.

Notice with the pair of sentences above, English does not give an indication of which kind of truth is involved, nor does it indicate the extreme difference between the two sentences.  They look pretty much the same, but are in fact fundamentally different.

But this is not the place for a discussion of what truth is, and it is not a discussion I particularly want to have at the moment.

If you are going to maintain that something out in the world is discovered that makes things good or bad, you are going to have a very hard time establishing such a claim.  No one has done it thus far in the history of philosophy.

I just don't see that this is a problem unique to ethics. Consider the idea of truth, or even time. You could also say the following:
"If you are going to maintain that something out in the world is discovered that makes things true or false, you are going to have a very hard time establishing such a claim.  No one has done it thus far in the history of philosophy." Or, "If you are going to maintain that something out in the world is discovered that makes things past or future..." (italics mine). Both of those concepts are dependent of rational animals starting with first principles and utilizing induction and deduction for the purposes of demonstration, ...

I don't agree with the way you say that these matters are started.  We are not doing geometry.  Think about the way children are taught, and how they first learn various concepts.  We don't start children off with first principles and build on them, as if we were teaching them geometry.

If things were constructed as you describe, there would be a very serious problem with deciding which "first principles" should be used.  And how could you justify using one set rather than another?  What you end up with is making everything essentially subjective, based upon the whims of selecting first principles one likes.

For some brief words on "truth," see comments above in this post.  For "time," I will be more succinct; time is change.  As that is more properly a topic for another thread, I will presently say nothing more about it.

Additionally, what Hume is saying fits in well with modern evolutionary theory, and with the idea that social animals need to get along with each other (or they would not be social).  The feelings or sentiments which form the basis of this are the foundation of ethics.  Ethical behavior has been observed in nonhuman animals, which further supports the idea that morals are not a matter of reasoning, but of feeling.  This also fits with how deeply these feelings are felt, for they are deeply imbedded in what we are.

I fully agree with Hume on this. I should reiterate some of my thoughts: 1. Morality cannot be divorced from feeling. Sensation is at least half of the determination of what brings pleasure and pain, and therefore happiness, and therefore our ethical foundation. 2. I don't think animals are totally devoid of reason. They may exercise it differently, and the best problem-solvers in the animal kingdom outside of us may appear rudimentary in comparison to our brightest mathematicians, physicists, etc., but they still are able to recognize patterns and put two and two together. 3. I see modern evolutionary theory as more or less related to the epistemology of moral theories (how we come to think we know what real goods are) rather than saying anything fruitful about the ontological status of "the Good" (that what we think we have come to know as real goods are really good), i.e. due to goodness' sake alone.

Up until # 3 we were in agreement.

There is no evidence of "the good" as a thing independent of beings having feelings.  There is no evidence of "the good" being good for its own sake.  You may as well tell me that you believe in God.

The motive or desire for such a thing is understandable, given the very strong, very deep feelings that most people have about such matters.  But feelings are not evidence of external existences for this any more than that they are evidence for the existence of God.

I don't think so.  If you disagree, I think you will find it a bit difficult to come up with evidence that there is something better for its own sake.  That it might be good for something else is easy enough, but that is an entirely different claim.

Like I said, it is more than a bit difficult! Maybe it is impossible. But that doesn't make any alternatives better (with regards to what?   ), and I don't think we should abandon concepts that are necessary for our everyday experiences in the actual world simply because they're difficult to think about. Nobody knows what numbers represent (well, except that they represent themselves!), but we wouldn't begin to think that the values they assign are arbitrarily selected (even though the squiggly lines are).

But Hume's theory is a better alternative.  It explains what we observe, without bringing into the matter some new existence of something for which we have no evidence.

And your idea that an idea of "the Good," as some independent thing, is necessary for our everyday experiences, is just false.  People live their entire lives without getting these matters clear in their minds.  What we observe is that people have strong feelings, and they act based on those feelings.  The idea that there is "something more" is of no explanatory value or use, and only generates an unsolvable problem.  Unsolvable, that is, as long as one holds that there is this independent thing known as "the Good."

I get the fact that you want there to be some something that is "the Good," independent of people.  I can even relate to wanting it.  But wanting it does not cause it to exist, any more than wanting God to exist causes God to exist.


I am not going to say anything about numbers.

When the first principles are at issue, any assumption of them is simply begging the question.  If that is not enough to convince you to rethink things, consider this:  If you assume some set of "first principles" and build your ethical system on that, upon what basis will you be able to select your system over another system, built on a different set of "first principles" that someone else prefers?

You cannot have an infinite regress of demonstrations. You must always begin with definitions, or first principles.

No.  That is not how anyone started.  Look at how a child learns, and you will see the beginnings that people actually have.

I think the basis for which we select these are the same as everything else---reason and evidence---but yes, we may just have to assume that happiness is better than misery, even if we cannot demonstrate this in any other way but an appeal to our experiences and that of everyone (including sentient animals) else---which nobody has trouble doing when it comes to "the problem of other minds."

For the very beginnings of knowledge, it cannot be that reason and evidence are used for selecting first principles.  In the beginning, one has no concepts with which one could even understand a "first principle."

The reason one can do such a thing in a geometry class is that one is not starting from the students knowing nothing.  One uses the knowledge that the students already have in order to explain what is going on in a geometry class.  Try teaching geometry to an infant and you will soon see the problem.

But this is all getting us far away from the subject of this thread.

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After writing the above, I finished reading the other posts after yours.  I see that ChadWooters agreeing with you on many points about which I disagree with you makes the comparison to God above seem even more pointed.