I wouldn't say that achieving a good that is its own end has to be completely without individual benefit. But in order to actually accrue the benefit of feeling good at the end of the day, you have to make it to the end of the day. And I'm not sure that being respected and remembered after death is much of a personal good -- honestly, what good does it do the deceased?Mr. P wrote:Taking this example, the firefighters did/do what they did/do becuase they had a calling to do good. They felt good at the end of the day from performing their deeds and that kept them going. Also...look at how respected and remembered they are to this day. For those that believe in ANYTHING after this life or the value of being remembered, it seems like this indeed had a benefit for them and their familes.
Look at it this way. Let's assume that no personal benefit accrued to the firefighters who died. And while we're at it, let's divorce ourselves from any direct connection we may have to the incident and say that no real good accrues directly to us by virtue of the act. Do we still think that their action was good? Is it good in itself?
That seems problematic to me. For one thing, we're notoriously inconsistent about who we consider part of civilization. For another, there are plenty of people who believe that it would be better (as in, more good) to have something else -- be there hermits, anarchists, or just plain discontents.There is no one single thing anyone can ever point to...except the one that concerns us right here and now: Our continued existence, together, as a Civilization.
Do you mean, Can I point to a good that isn't our own conception, or Can I point to a good that isn't founded in a prior moral consideration? In the first case, the answer would be no, but then, that's all part of my view of culture and epistemology -- I think we look at the entire world through a set of symbols and ideas of our own creation, and I'm not sure that you can ever break that screen down to the point that you'd be able so see the world as it is apart from human though. In the second case, I'd say it's possible, but to be honest, I'm not entirely sure what that good would be, so I'm not entirely convinced of its existence -- even as a working notion. Hence, this thread.Can YOU point to an ultimate good that is not based on any moral definitions that we have created?
I didn't say it was irrelevant. But that it may be relevant is no reason to let it stand in for your own answer. What I asked was, Do you think there's any such thing as a good that is its own end? You answered as though I were asking for a few words on what cultural artifacts have influenced our notions of good.DH wrote:Genesis is hardly an irrelevant component to the discussion.
I provided a brief but fairly comprehensive explanation of what I meant by good in my opening post. If you don't want to take that for granted, at least for the sake of one tiny little thread, then fine, but you won't really be answering my question.To begin discussing what we mean by good by engaging one of the primary sources of the meaning of the term seems sensible to me.
Okay, so granting that we are reliant on the idea of a transcendental source, is there any chance of one actually existing?I don't think any of us (whether we start in Athens or Jerusalem) can escape reliance upon some transcendental source when determining what is good. If we choose to look, we are always going to find a deeper, or higher, stratum of authority to legitimize our moral codes.
No, I'm pretty sure my questioning in this thread is an attempt to find out whether or not the people posting to BookTalk believe that there is a good outside of what we, as individuals, want.Your questioning in this thread is an attempt to understand our choices for where we have drawn our lines.
So, following from that, would you say that atheists and metaphysical naturalists are incapable of morality? Or that, despite their protests, they actually believe in "some kind of heaven", if only to sustain their belief in morality?Again, I don't see how any of us can escape including some kind of heaven in our moral equations.
Even without making a big semantic production out of it, I'd say that "the good of the species" qualifies as a higher power. When we talk about transcendence and a higher power, what we're talking about, essentially, is whatever trumps individual human existence. And if you conceive of morality as something that could demand of an individual self-sacrafice for the benefit of the species, then you're definitely talking about that sort of trump card.Mr. P wrote:I can be good without appealing to any higher power, unless you consider the benefit of the species a higher power...but if that is the case, then we are just in a semantics game again.
It's an odd question, once you start to think about: Why should I give a damn about my species? After all, once I'm dead, the survival of the species doesn't mean anything to me in practical terms. And to consider how I would feel if I were still alive at the point seems like an abstraction without much purpose. So why should I do anything that would endanger my own existence if the only thing to recommend it is the survival of the species? Wouldn't it be more logical to premise my morality on maintaining the species for the duration of my lifespan, and then, after that, to hell with 'em?
It looks to me as though a lot of people have taken arguments like those in "The Moral Animal" -- arguments to the effect that our morality is not so much a rational consideration of what might be good, but a genetic inheritence conditioned by evolution -- and construed them as the proper basis for reiterating morality as we've received it. So they say things like, We should be moral because it's good for the species, rather than, We tend to be moral (regardless of whether or not we should be) because the forms of behavior we identify as moral were evolutionarily selected.