Good and Evil

[bennyboy]

There is no a priori knowledge of "the good."  That is just nonsense.  It is a way that people try to beg the question in an argument, to pretend that one's prejudices are based on reason.  

There is no evidence of any kind that "something more" is going on as the basis for morality than that beings feel about things, and so those things are important to them.


Indeed, the whole idea that we somehow need some awareness of some metaphysical entity called "the Good" is absurd.  Since we do not know of it, it is unimportant for our actual moral practice.

Phyrro, I think your ideas pretty closely mirror mine. However, I want to play devil's advocate on a couple of questions.

First of all, is a priori knowledge equivalent to reason? Why would claiming a priori knowledge be basing prejudices on reason?

I could argue that as people we DO have a priori knowledge of what is good or evil TO US, via feelings we had as children. For example, almost every child is upset when other children are shown favor. This quality is so common among people that I'd say it's a priori on a species level, i.e. that humans evolved ALREADY having the sense that seeing a sibling favored is evil. There are other ideas which I'd say have been intrinsic to the species since before it evolved: love of family, fear of death, and a sense of biological satisfaction via sex, food, etc. All these are so common to so many members of the species that I'd say those without them are exceptional: and depending on how they behave, they are likely to be seen either as monsters or as saints, as heroes or villains. But their's enough commonality in human behaviors, especially in infancy, that we can rationally objectivy those behaviors, and the feelings that motivate them, to an objective truth: "Mother's milk is good for babies."

That being said, it is only through feelings that we learn how we are programmed to feel. And (many believe), it is only through the objective function of the brain that one has subjective feelings. Therefore what is objective is objective, and what is subjective is also said to be no more than an awareness of part of the functioning of the objective. The later I would tentatively call a priori knowledge, because it comes from one's human-species nature rather than from one's ego.

In other words, the subjective nature of our moral ideas, and even their variability from person to person, doesn't mean good and evil are not objective-- it just means that they are exactly as complex as our species evolution and existing membership.