Is there a good?

[MadArchitect]

Now you are so certain about morality? This is a very interesting point you make. Morality is not about what must be, but what won't be. Can you clarify?

Only to say that, in 4000 years of recorded history, we rarely seem to have achieved any sort of unqualified good, and in cases approaching an obvious good, that end seems to have been won only by struggle, and not as a matter of inevitability.

[Dissident Heart]

MA: in 4000 years of recorded history, we rarely seem to have achieved any sort of unqualified good

What does it tell you that within that 4000 years, so much of the history of morality is an attempt to define, establish and fortify an unqualified good? I agree that it is rarely achieved: but why all the effort to reach a seemingly impossible goal? I think this might be a clue to some strands of eschatology: the good that cant be attained now will eventually be reached at the end of time, or the world to come. Conversely, there is a contemporary eschatology that warns if we don't attain the unqualified good, then we will witness the end of life as we know it...the devastation of the biosphere and ecological meltdown.

MA: in cases approaching an obvious good, that end seems to have been won only by struggle, and not as a matter of inevitability.

This is one variation of a critique of Marxist determinism: history will inevitably lead to the revolution of the proletariat, the collapse of capitalism and class war, and the establishment of pure socialism in a communist society. The criticism is that history aint nearly as reliable as he hoped: and for folks who want a revolution, the only thing inevitable is that waiting for history to deliver the goods, is waiting for failure.

Still, it seems that where those seemingly impossible, but obvious, goods were attained, a particular kind of certainty was required for the struggle. An unmitigated hope, audacious and impossible, was needed to spur the faint hearted to overcome what seemed inevitable and necessary. A counter-necessity and inevitability is necessary: a faith that something is at work that is larger than my personal efforts- even larger than our collective efforts.

I think this speaks to the Ruach Elohim: a spirt and force that pulls persons out of despair, lures them out of resignation, and fuels a hope that sees a better world is possible, and necessary. It corrects the delusion of isolated agents struggling against an impenetrable machine; and re-establishes right relationships as interconnected forces working to heal and mend Creation...and this is good, very good.

[seeker]

MadArchitect wrote:

seeker wrote:

There is no absolute Good that exists independenly in reality outside of the human mind.

Would you clarify something about that belief? Does the specifically human and conceptual nature of that good make it imagination and ultimately disposable, or can a human idea of that sort have its own dignity? Are some human notions of the good preferable to others, or is each person's preference incommensurable?

I'm still having trouble with this concept of "the good." I think of it as a moral code or a system of ethics, not as a singularity. So forgive me if my clarification misses the point of your question.

I don't think most people come up with an original notion of what is good and bad. We are taught these definitions and rules by our culture, in which they have been churning and evolving in various versions and varieties since the beginning of civilization. If we choose to cut ourselves loose from the specific code we were taught, we either adopt another one of the varieties available, or we attempt to come up with our own. Civilization has evolved codes that have, or once had, benefit in maintaining it. The trouble is that any code gets outdated as civilization continues to evolve, unless they are continually updated. Unfortunately, in our need to maintain a viable system of ethics, they get set in stone. People make moral decisions based on a specific set of rules and are reluctant to see those rules change because those decisions are then called into question. We have a vested interest in our chosen code, especially if we are one of its spokespersons.

However, I don't think it's particularly difficult to improve most popular codes. They tend to be sort of rough-and-ready rules of thumb. Great thinkers have always been able to articulate more subtle and profound ethical ideas. In fact, when we attempt to come up with our own notions, don't we usually borrow ideas from many other thinkers? I do, at least. But I find at least two major disadvantages to this approach. First, I am constantly contradicting myself, and second, I can make no moral decision easily or without second guessing.

So, to get back to your question, "are some human notions of the good preferable to others?" I would say yes, and, what's more, if we are looking for better ideas, we recognize them when we come across them.

I'm getting terribly behind in this conversation.

[seeker]

MadArchitect wrote:

seeker wrote:

There are some pleasures that we feel guilty about even as we experience them.

Are associated "bad" feelings the only reason to avoid them? For example, if a person could revenge some perceived mishandling without feeling a sense of guilt or repulsion, would revenge then be an unqualified good for that person?

I think most actions occasion mixed feelings. I wouldn't consider the fact that some of them are negative (fear is negative as well as guilt) to be a reliable guide to good and bad. I used guilt as an example, but even that isn't always consistent with my notions of good and bad.

Or is the act good or bad independently of how the person acting feels about it.

The 9/11 terrorists felt that what they were doing was "good." I consider it "bad." Is there a higher judge who can settle this issue? Would you consider history a higher authority? I don't think that the human species can continue to survive unless moral codes that sanction mass slaughter are discredited, but I don't think that's a guarantee that it will happen.

[MadArchitect]

What does it tell you that within that 4000 years, so much of the history of morality is an attempt to define, establish and fortify an unqualified good? I agree that it is rarely achieved: but why all the effort to reach a seemingly impossible goal?

I'd say that, if nothing else, it's a reminder of the complexity of the problem. Really sitting down an examining the history of immorality can demonstrate the manner in which some of our most glaring examples of immorality have arisen out of historical processes that are difficult to follow so long as you're a part of the process. The conclusion, as I see it, is that persuing the good, if such a thing exists, would require an apparatus much more sophisticated than humans possess by nature. I wouldn't say that makes ethics impossible, but it does force us to reconcile ourselves to the best that we can do, which is, if we're honest, pretty far from ideal.

[MadArchitect]

I'm still having trouble with this concept of "the good." I think of it as a moral code or a system of ethics, not as a singularity.

It's a troublesome concept, which is part of why I didn't assume that everyone saw it in the same light.

The thing about moral codes and systems of ethics is that we tend to think of them as progressing along somewhat rational lines, and the traditional way of conceiving that logic is to say that they all relate back to an at least implicit underlying principle or motive or symbol or what have you. That "what have you" serves as the criteria by which we judge all actions, and our moral and ethical codes can usually be boiled down to relatively reliable embodiments of prescriptive behavior arising from those judgements.

In other words, if we believe two distinct moral axioms -- say, "it is wrong to steal" and "it is wrong to murder" -- when we really start philosophizing about morality, we'll tend to think of those two basically distinct axioms as having both arisen from a single underlying conception of why some forms of action are preferable to others, apart from any immediate goal we may have. If that "singularity," as you've called it, is really just about maintaining a particular form of society, then I don't see much reason to insist on calling our exploration of it morality -- you could just as easily call it sociology or legal theory. (I am assuming that part of the reason our moral and legal codes don't always agree is that they're meant to obtain different ends.) But if what we're doing really is morality, then it may be proper to suppose that what we're looking for is a principle of good. Does that make sense?

I don't think most people come up with an original notion of what is good and bad. We are taught these definitions and rules by our culture, in which they have been churning and evolving in various versions and varieties since the beginning of civilization.

I'm not sure I agree with all the terminology you're using there, but if I understand your point, I think it's a good one. We pretty much always come at the question of good from the opposite end of what we take to be the logical progression. So we say that our moral codes may be related back to a central conception of what is good, but we don't arrive at those codes by starting with the good and elaborating therefrom -- we start by practicing behaviors taught us by those around us.

Realistically, that's how we go about most things -- we start learning how to do it before we ever think to form the question of why we do it or what it is. I don't think the fact of our natural approach to the good is, itself, an answer to the question of whether or not there is one. Most ethical philosophy is critical in nature -- we trying to abstract a principle of good, hoping it to be true, in order to have some criteria by which to judge particular ethical claims.

Civilization has evolved codes that have, or once had, benefit in maintaining it.

I think using the verb "evolved" can be misleading in this case. It isn't necessarily true that any particular civilization has given rise to a morality that sustains it. Conflicting moralities seem to have, at certain points, been strong enough to contribute to major upheavals, essentially changing the form of civilization. It would probably be more accurate to say that, under certain conditions, the self-sustaining imperative in a society serves as a limit on the forms that morality can take, but that under other conditions, the moral imperative may be strong enough to subject the society to change, perhaps even at the risk of destroying it.

Is there a higher judge who can settle this issue? Would you consider history a higher authority?

I suppose that depends on what you mean by history.

[seeker]

Dissident Heart,

Is the force or call you refer to have a source external to the human mind or is it a product of the interdependent web you mentioned, of which the individual is a component? Also, would you consider the source to be an intelligent entity?

Although I am not familiar with the discipline from which much of your vocabulary is drawn, I was caught by your reference to a web of interrelated life forms and creative energy. Beginning with the emphasis on interpersonal relationship elucidated by Buber in his I and Thou, I have been increasingly convinced that the atomic unit of life is not the individual person/entity, but the relationship between individuals. Louise B. Young, in her book, The Unfinished Universe, depicts an integrated web of energy that encompasses the entire cosmos and that is, moreover, becoming increasingly complex. In her argument against "the conception of existence as a blindly running flux of disintegrating energy," she states,

"Since that moment [when the universe began] trillions upon trillions of stars have coalesced out of the original chaos and have become organized into great globular clusters .....The transformation process is still going on around us. Stars are being born, the galaxies are evolving......The advent of life, its spectacular growth and evolution, provide the most striking demonstration of the potential hidden deep within the very substance of the universe. I postulate that we are witnessing

[MadArchitect]

You are looking for the purpose of the moral code, right?

Eh... I'm trying to get at whether or not people think there is a good that serves as the final cause for moral action. Because if the final cause is something more utilitarian -- sustaining society, for example -- then I'm not sure there's really anything that corresponds to morality.

But it looks to me as though a lot of the negative answers people might give to that question have the potential for circularity. If, for example, we say that the final cause of morality is simply that of sustaining society, then what do we say when we're asked why we care whether or not society gets sustained? Most of the answers we'd get, it seems likely to me, would be little more than ways of dancing around the idea that "society is good". In which case, we're back to a covert notion of good at root in morality.

Before we exert a lot of energy in trying to figure out what the good is, or at least how we might recognize it, I think we should clarify whether or not we think such a think actually exists. And that's really all I meant to ask in the first place.

You seem to be specifying something Objective, in the sense that it can be derived or proved to be the Ultimate Good?

Not necessarily objective -- I have problems with that term, mostly related to epistemology -- but at least something conceivable, that is, something not obviously subject to a lot of logical contradiction or obviously antithetical to what we already believe to be true. That is to say, the Good, for purposes of this discussion, doesn't have to be a thing.

In that case, it can't be speculative, and it can't be based on anecdotal evidence, etc. In other words, it has to either be subject to the scientific method, or it has to be dictated by an intelligence larger than human intelligence. Right?

I wouldn't limit it to science, nor would I maintain that it must otherwise be related to some form of deity. All I'm asking is whether or not you guys think that there is some conceivable good that ought to serve as the final cause (in the Aristotelian sense), as the guiding principle for human behavior. How you substantiate that belief is your business.

[Dissident Heart]

seeker: Is the force or call you refer to have a source external to the human mind or is it a product of the interdependent web you mentioned, of which the individual is a component?

That's a very good question. I'm not sure from where the force and call arises. By calling it "force" or "call" I suppose I am pigeoning it into some space or category that language is probably incapable of accurately conveying: the words just don't get it right. Just as terms like internal/external don't really capture the complexities of eco-systems theory: more to the point, inside and outside are relative to the particular event described...change the focus of event and watch the inside and outside change as well.

By beginning with a Ruach Elohim (the spirit of god) narrative I am binding myself to a particular tradition of meanings: for the most part it is a Biblical universe, but I am well aware of the many strands of divergent and contradictory interpretations within that universe. If I recognize the force and call to emanate from the Ruach Elohim, I am referring to something that transcends the contingencies of time/space/matter; yet is intimately bound to the world, immanently present as the event that spurs humanity to rise above self-destructive/other-dismissive malice...the event that agitates our conscience and stirs our longing for something more than the same old bullshit of hate, ignorance and degeneration: I think it has something to do with our passion for justice and desire for peace: fundamentally, it is an issue of love. Not love as sappy emotion, but as will to care for and protect and even endure death for something more than my immediate needs and concerns.

I am well aware of the fragile case I am making here. I think it is more of a theopoetics than theology, and certainly a few steps removed from simple ethics.

seeker: Also, would you consider the source to be an intelligent entity?

I don't know if entity is the right word; nor do I know what word would work best. Some philosophers and theologians (Derrida and Caputo, for instance) seem to find valuable use with the term event . God is a word that contains an event: the event elicits something from us...it evokes and provokes a response...as I've described it here, it is a response toward the good (the very good), a call and challenge to heal and mend, repair and regenerate creation. Is this intelligent? Again, this implies a distinct agent with will and intellect: I don't know if the event I am describing can be cornered into that sort of definition.

seeker: Beginning with the emphasis on interpersonal relationship elucidated by Buber in his I and Thou, I have been increasingly convinced that the atomic unit of life is not the individual person/entity, but the relationship between individuals.

I think Buber is a good resource for this discussion, at least my two cents worth of the dialogue. Buber's "I and Thou" has been summarized as basically a careful exegesis of the Biblical injuction to "love one's neighbor as oneself"...but not just one's neighbor, but the whole entirety of existence: all that you encounter as a communique from God...nothing is simply inert, irrelevant, impotent matter: on the contrary, everything is something from God...not merely a random assortment of "its", but a meaningful message from an intimate "You". Anyhow, that's my rather crude reduction of the I-Thou schema.

"Since that moment [when the universe began] trillions upon trillions of stars have coalesced out of the original chaos and have become organized into great globular clusters .....The transformation process is still going on around us. Stars are being born, the galaxies are evolving......The advent of life, its spectacular growth and evolution, provide the most striking demonstration of the potential hidden deep within the very substance of the universe. I postulate that we are witnessing

[MadArchitect]

DH, it looks as though you've taken a rather roundabout route towards the suggestion that love could serve as the good. That seems like the beginnings of a workable idea. For example, it does seem to me that love could be construed to fit the first criteria I suggested. If a person might be expected to sacrafice their very life in the service of something they love, then that love certainly has some claim as a final cause.

That said, I suspect that you wouldn't want to leave "love" as an answer unqualified. All sorts of contradictions pop up. After all, people can often be seen doing things we would consider immoral, all in the name of love. The reasonable conclusion would seem to be either that an unqualified love is a little too shakey to serve as the good, or that our aptitude for recognizing moral and moral action is faulty. What I mean by that last statement is, that if all love is equally viable as a basis for love, then even atrocity committed in the name of love would be moral, but we might mistake it for immoral if we weren't accustomed to recognizing the good. I don't think any of us in this discussion would be willing to support that point of view, though, so we're left with the former -- love might be the good, but we have to be more specific about what we mean by love and how it applies.

As for Buber, it seems to me that the portions of "I and Thou" that deal with the "love thy neighbor as thyself" dictum are introduced primarily to explore the threads that connect Buber's Judaic-rooted exploration to similar traditions in Christianity; recognizing the connection may be useful, but it's probably going too far to assume that the Christian principle is foremost in Buber's work. Rather, it seems to me that Buber is very explicit in marking the "I-Thou" relationship as something spontaneous, transitory, and ultimately beyond the I's ability to control.

I'd love to talk more about "I and Thou", as it was a pretty formative book for me, but I'd rather we start that discussion in another thread, so as to stay with the main threads of discussion in this one. Maybe we could talk about it in the context of making it one of the Additional Book Discussions.