RE: Christians, Prove Your God Is Good
March 3, 2015 at 3:44 pm
(This post was last modified: March 3, 2015 at 3:49 pm by Ignorant.)
Sorry. I actually had non-internet things to do! =)
(February 28, 2015 at 6:44 pm)The Reality Salesman Wrote: It sounds like you're wanting me to imagine a scenario with just me and an apple (no other things required, correct?). You want me to imagine the moment I feel compelled to sink my teeth into it. At that moment, I make a judgement about my Apple-biting experience, and that judgement will be based only on whether I got pleasure from eating the apple, or experienced a decrease in pleasure, correct?
No, that is not correct. I backtracked in our discussion to try to figure out how we have come to be talking past each other on this point, and I may have found it here:
(February 28, 2015 at 2:44 pm)The Reality Salesman Wrote: (February 28, 2015 at 1:39 pm)Ignorant Wrote: Why must "less desirable options" be available in order to judge that some one thing is desirable under a particular aspect? If you are hungry, you don't need to encounter both an apple AND a rock to judge that the apple is desirable/good.
You say "we don't need to encounter both an apple and a rock to judge that the apple is better", but you do need to encounter what it feels like to be hungry and what it feels like to be satisfied.
I used the terms "desirable/good" which you quoted and translated
as "better". Does "good" and "better" mean the same thing to you? Because, I ABOSLUTELY think it is true that you need to encounter BOTH an apple AND a rock in order to judge that the apple is better.
As for the hypothetical scenario including ONLY you and ONLY an apple, that was my attempt to answer YOUR question here:
"Why do you think that is? If all that existed was a single option, how might you classify that? What meaning does the word "classify" or "judgement" have when there is no basis to compare anything?" -you, pg. 26,
#255
I have already clarified that a thing does not "project" an abstract "satisfaction" or "desirability" with which a human can form an abstract judgment about a thing without ever interacting with it. The judgment of whether or not a thing is desirable includes both the seeking of that thing and obtaining it (and the subsequent experience of either a decrease or increase in the desire for which it was sought).
"Could you judge [some thing] as either causing an increase or a decrease in desire
upon obtaining it? Yes . . . In order to judge something as good, bad, whatever, it does not require other things. It merely requires the test of satisfaction or not satisfaction." -Me, pg. 26,
#258, emphasis mine
(February 28, 2015 at 6:44 pm)The Reality Salesman Wrote: I just wanted to make sure that we nailed that down. Sometimes it seems like people believe that if something is subjective then there is nothing objective to be extracted from it. We're making tracks here, making tracks!...lets nail some more of this down...
I agree entirely. It is a greatly misunderstood aspect of ethics, and I am glad we seem to have a more or less clear understanding of that point!
(February 28, 2015 at 6:44 pm)The Reality Salesman Wrote: One last thing...I don't believe you've ever said "that song was good" without ever having heard other songs...This may be where this "Judge/Classify" distinction is causing confusion. I'll come back to this.
Your incredulity here is certainly justified. Of course that has not been my experience. I probably heard songs before I had the capacity to say a word much less form a rational thought about the experience. However, do you also doubt that I withheld judgment about the first song I ever heard (assuming that I had the ability to express a rational thought)?
If I had said "that song was good", I implicitly meant that it satisfied some particular human desire in some more or less complete way. I was able to say that as a rational person because my entire life up until that point was a continuum of "feeling" and sating human desires with an ever evolving and (hopefully) more accurate capacity to judge different things' ACTUAL capacity to sate those desires. From the very first moment I felt a human desire (does not even have to be consciously) and tried to sate it, I have been judging things as either satisfying or not.
If I said, "That song was
better than that other song", then OF COURSE I necessarily must have formed a judgment about that other song as well (how could I make a comparative reference to a different object without having judged/evaluated it? That would be irrational). Could I not say, about both songs, "That song was good"?
But, again, here is my point. How can you compare two songs without forming a judgment about the two individually?
"Things must first be judged individually before they can be compared as more or less desirable than other things." - Me, pg. 26,
#254
If you eat a <insert your favorite food> for the first time when you are hungry, you will experience the satisfaction of the desire. Even if you don't formulate the thought "That was good", your experience of desire and satisfaction is real, specific, and particular to the circumstances. Any formulation you use to describe that particular experience
of satisfaction is what I mean by "That was good".
Now, it seems to me, that you are equivocating this meaning with the meaning of "good" as "better". "Better" would mean something like, "This food satisfies me
more than that food."
Sorry if I misunderstood or misrepresented your views, which it looks like I did.
