What is GOOD?

[Whateverist]

Empathy and reason are the means to a achieve a desired end, not the end in themselves.Within the naturalist paradigm both empathy and reason are happy by-products of an indifferent evolutionary process. Human reason serves as a fancy set of claws and fangs. Empathy perhaps a type of protective herd behaviour. They're about survival nothing more, nothing less. Reason and empathy are morally neutral means of survival. They do not conform to any higher moral standard.

Well this gets into the semantics of what we mean by "morality". What I have in mind is entirely natural with no pretense of anything 'higher'. However to say that both empathy and reason serve only survival doesn't accurately describe how either operates in the present in any one of us. Certainly it isn't for the sake of either my own or my specie's survival that those of us who act on empathy do so. It would be better to say that both have arisen for their survival value, but whether or how either figure into any of our decisions now is not something completely determined by how they have arisen. I sometimes think I am aware empathetically of what is going on with others and I reflexively give that some weight in my decisions up to some limit of sacrifice and inconvenience to myself (which almost always is decided contextually).

Within naturalism that is...And if naturalism is your assumption then it is inconsistent to say that either empathy or reason allow us to rise above our animal nature. Rise above? To what?

Here I can readily agree with you. I don't think that we ever do rise above animal nature. But I think you short change our animal nature if you assume that is entirely egotistical. Other mammals and birds demonstrate profound concern for their mates and young, even to the point of incurring great risk to defend them. No eternal reward or platonic standard is needed to make sense of altruism, love, regret, duty, or any other morally loaded word that I think of at the moment. I'm much more concerned that we live up to what is best in our animal nature than that we rise 'above' it. Excessive rationalization can disorientate us from our very natural better lights.

Either the answer is within naturalism, which it isn't since all that matters is survival, or they, empathy and reason, converge on a specific end, which implies that evolution is teleological, something excluded from the neo-Darwinist paradigm

The question, I think, we must ask ourselves is this. What is the ultimate goal? What is the good that we hope to attain by applying reason and listening to empathy. And what is it that makes it good? Apart from the means, empathy and reason, what is the desired end?

And here is where we part company, though it has been a pleasure walking with you this far. I'm not sure what you have in mind when you say the "answer" is or isn't in naturalism. I wonder what you expect of such an answer. Must it explain our actual behavior, our feelings about that behavior or what our behavior should be explained only by its alignment with some absolute standard. If the latter, I don't see what justifies that hope other than what religion has led people to expect.

This deserves more consideration but my dogs (and I) deserve a walk now while there is still daylight enough. Good post though and it is good to have you back Mr. Wooters.