[Serious] What is goodness?

[Porcupine]

What is goodness?

I don't mean I want the dictionary definition. I mean in the metaethical sense. What, to you, is goodness about? When we say that something is ethically good what do we mean? And is it objective or subjective? Relative or absolute? Are there moral facts or aren't there moral facts? Etc.

To quote from the Wikipedia article of metaethics without linking it as I'm not allowed to link anything yet:

While normative ethics addresses such questions as "What should I do?", evaluating specific practices and principles of action, meta-ethics addresses questions such as "What is goodness?" and "How can we tell what is good from what is bad?",

I have bolded the question that is to be addressed on this thread.

I have no idea what goodness is myself. I used to think it was "whatever the universe/God/nature willed/wanted which is basically whatever deterministically and fatalistically necessarily happens" but now I have no idea because I'm going through a existential crisis regarding my theology and I don't know if I'm an atheist or an agnostic or what I am anymore.

EDIT: I'm starting to think I'm rather nihilistic right now and I would perhaps subscribe to error theory. But I'm not so sure. Perhaps pantheism isn't not so meaningless after all. I'm unsure. Hence the crisis.

But what do you think?

[Peebothuhlu]

Chocolate.

Chocolate is goodness.



Not at work.

[AniKoferBo]

goodness somehow seems relative. my idea of what is good may be very different from yours.

[Abaddon_ire]

What is goodness?

I don't mean I want the dictionary definition. I mean in the metaethical sense. What, to you, is goodness about? When we say that something is ethically good what do we mean? And is it objective or subjective? Relative or absolute? Are there moral facts or aren't there moral facts? Etc.

I go with Dillahunty's position.Not because he claims it. I had reached largely the same position long before I even knew there was a Dillahunty.

[Sal]

What is goodness?

It can be described via its negation: Not being a dick.


I'm not convinced there exists moral facts, as I've yet to see any objective moral standard that everyone can live by. I do have subjective moral values though, the main one being minimizing harm and suffering. The positive spin of those values is increasing happiness and wellbeing overall. In effect & this in mind the Golden Rule gets you a long way, which is that you don't want done to you, don't do to others. Or positively: Treat others how you want to be treated.

Goodness is just actions with a positive outcome.

[Gnomey]

Well, if you want to get scientific, we tend to look at things, situations, experiences, art, people, actions, etc. as "good" when it causes the release of neurotransmitters such as dopamine in our brains. That can be caused by anything from sex to chocolate to laughter to roller coasters to exercise to listening to music to looking at your phone when it pings.....

If you want to get into the morality/ethics debate, here's an interesting stance:

Let's separate morality and ethics. Morality is absolute: to be moral is to never intrude on another person's right to be. That is, to never take away their choice to do as they wish, as long as they aren't choosing to take away someone else's right to choose. Everyone has a right to decide how they spend their money, or who they have sex with, or how they behave; as long as they aren't hurting or impeding someone else in the process, there's no reason to stop them. Essentially, any act of aggression is immoral (unless someone has asked for the aggression to be afflicted upon themselves). 

Ethics is more complicated. Ethics is about "the greater good." Some things are ethical, but initiate aggression in some form, and as such are immoral. Take one of life's two inevitabilities: taxes (the other being death). Taxes suck, yes, but they pay for things like roads, healthcare (in Canada, anyway), fire departments, social services, and other important things. But taxes also initiate aggression - if you don't pay your taxes, you're threatened with fines and jail time. The government is, in a sense, holding a gun to your head to steal your money. But we argue that taxes do good things; as such, they are ethical.

So, are immoral things always bad? Are ethical things always good or right? Well. That's where the debate happens.

[no one]

Jimi Hendrix!

[Belacqua]

But what do you think?

Have you looked into the idea of goodness as "flourishing"? 

I think this comes from Aristotle, but you see it all through history. Arguably it's Nietzsche's view as well. 

The good is that which enables people to flourish.

[brewer]

eat
drink
sex
safety

After that it's a crap shoot based on a lot of variables.

[ignoramus]

I think all life itself is flawed. It has and always will be survival of the fittest.
No-one and nothing can flourish with someone or something losing.

Life is like an engine. Once started, it needs energy to keep going. Economies are even worse, if economies don't grow, they falter and stall.
I'm not happy that we kill animals to survive. But we do it. It's part of life.
Everything which goes against the principles of survival of the fittest IS the opposite of flourishing, according to nature. And we are nature.
Ethics and morals are man made constructs, a byproduct of intelligent consciousness. Not place in nature for that.
We pretend it matters. We've destroyed our climate in the process. Technology won't save us this time.