Good and Evil

[Mudhammam]

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.

I see Plato as attempting to rectify the disparity in the views of Parmenides and Heraclitus in much the same way that Kant sought to reconcile rationalism and empiricism. While he may have reified abstract objects, his failure was not in simply giving undue exaltation to linguistic concepts. He recognized that our faculties of sense perceive a world that is in constant flux while our intellect makes the world intelligible through the usage of conceptual truths that are not. You can say that he's incorrect to give such a lofty position to the realm of the abstract, but refuting his philosophy requires much greater effort than a superficial reading of it.

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.

That says nothing about whether those feelings of actual goods, that every individual shares and in which there is found widespread agreement, have any basis in objective (or conversely, relative) truth. So, even though I never said Hume was wrong, I do insist that applying his arguments here misses the point.

As for truth and an affection for scientific principles, you really like to bring up diverse subjects all in one place.  

The issues, of objective truths and of objective goods, are not actually all that diverse. Any attempt to justify the one can easily be made to accord with the other. Notice that the question of whether objective truths and objective goods exist and can be known is not the same as the question of how we can come to know them and distinguish either from falsehoods or evils. As I already said, the quotes from Hume on sensation have more to do with difficulties in resolving the latter of those two distinct topics (in other words, your confusing ontology and epistemology).

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.

Have you missed something in the 2,500 year old epistemological debates over that very question? The entire issue of existentialism (likely predated in Protagoras' declaration that "man is the measure of all things") and the relativism that necessarily results is derived from the very difficulty in establishing objective first principles that everyone can agree on. As I said, this isn't related simply to the question of ethics, but of minds, logic, truth, etc.

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.

There is not "evidence" in the sense of physical qualities that we can touch, see, hear, etc. Of course. But there is evidence, in a priori knowledge, that any discussion of "better and worse" requires a framework outside of ourselves through which a determination regarding the status of an object can be made with the expectation of agreement that is substantiated by more than merely personal dispositions, i.e. as in through syllogistic demonstration coupled with our feelings of empathy and the like.

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.

Yes, ontological arguments for objective goods are similar to the ones employed by those seeking to justify their belief in God. Except that there is nothing in a rational demonstration of the former that requires personality, omnipotence, omniscience, etc, and all of the other silly anthropomorphic features people like to imagine as necessary for their pet deity. It's as if I appealed to "Supreme Reason," and you responded, "That sounds just like a 'Supreme Creator'." They're both conjectured as abstract somethings that ought to be regarded as reigning supreme over our thinking faculties... and that's about it. So, your quip is just irrelevant.

I didn't respond to every one of your comments, but only to those that I felt were worth a reply. If there's anything that you "feel that I was wrong" to have ignored, I'll be glad to oblige. I might also suggest that, even if you don't really do so, you should at least try not to give off the impression that you revere Hume. I like him a lot, but reverence for philosophers is never appropriate.