/sci/ - Science & Math

>When we know everything there is to know about a being then we also know what is good for it.

Nope.tiff

there is none good but God, and only by using an absolute standard can you determine good. otherwise, you simply keep moving the "good" line in back of your own actions, and justify your continually wicked acts as "good".

>>2230569

That sentence is logically true. How can you say that it is wrong. That would be a contradiction in itself.

To know what is good for a being is part of "everything there is to know about a being" so when we know "everything there is to know about a being" we automatically also know what is good for a being.

Sam Harris, is that you?

>>2230571

Again. In practice it might be very hard to find out what is truly good. But in principle it is very simple. Let's say we understand another person ABSOLUTELY - i.e. we are basically running an emulation of the person in our heads and tried out ALL POSSIBLE things that can happen to that person and what effects it has.

Once we run this test we know which are the ideal conditions for said person to flourish and therefore we know what is good for it.

>>2230576
Look up the concept of the "is-ought gap".

You still need an axiom, such as "minimise suffering".

>>2230587
i fail to see how perfectly knowing fallen men leads to absolute good; all are wicked, and the heart above all desires wickedness; who can know it? and even if perfectly understanding a wicked heart is possible, how would that lead to good?

nay, there is none good but God, and those who have been transformed by His power alone

>>2230585

The axiom is (obviously) the good life, i.e. if you would have total knowledge of all the possible lifes you could life then the life (or maybe more than one) which you would prefer to all others is a good life for you.

>>2230591

You make no sense. You claim to already know what is good is yet claim that humans by themselves can't. If humans by themselves can not find out what is good how can you claim to know that God is good?

But you are a troll anyway...

>>2230561
David Hume has already crapped all over your noble ideals, sinner.

there is no logical basis for observing how a being is and then determining how a being should be.

>>2230600
no, i merely repeat what Jesus told a man 2000 years ago; why do you call me good? for only one is good, and that is God

>>2230600
let me ask you a question; why is revealed truth worth less in your mind than acquired truth? why does the act of going through the motions of determining what is true and what is not true inherently better than accepting what God says is true as truth? if there is a God, and there is, would it not be logical to believe what He said?

>>2230603

If Hume really meant it this way then he was wrong.
If we would understand human nature completely then we would understand what is good for humans. The same goes for mice, rabbits and horses.

If this would not be the case that this simply would mean that there is no possible environment or set of actions that is good for humans - and to claim this seems to be ridiculous.

>>2230626
but the glaring assumption you are making is that not only is human nature knowable, but it is at some core good; that is to say, that men are somehow good at a level higher than that which they are currently living; surely this assumption is false, and all that stems from it false, as we know for certain that man at his core is not good, and that left to his own devices, does not good but evil.

>>2230626
>there is no possible environment or set of actions that is good for humans - and to claim this seems to be ridiculous.

Hume was a bit upset with that outcome as well, but it is nonetheless truth.

we can measure good, if we define what type of benefit we seek and then examine which line of action will produce greatest benefit according to the chosen metric. All Hume was noting was that there's no logical basis for deciding what we think is best. It's just a matter of fashion, or biology, or response to our environment, and thus good is constantly changing as an ideal.

However what I presume OP is looking for is humanistic utilitarian morality, which is a decent basis for ethical judgments, and is arguably the basis for all religious and secular morality everywhere.

>>2230617

I want to know the truth. I want to understand as much as I can. Understanding what is good for others is also good for me because by understanding them I share their satisfactions.

To your question about trust: This is pointless because you don't understand what you are even talking about. If you know the mind of god then you are all-knowing already. If you don't then you are really not making any sense. We can never say that it is logical to trust an unknown something.

>>2230635

I am saying that there is something good FOR humans not that all humans are essentially good.

But you are forgetting what I originally said. Even if our moral exercise will be fruitless we still know what our goal - what the foundation is.

IF (and I know this is a very big if) a human would be able to COMPLETELY (like I described before) understand another being then he would know what is good for that being. How can you disagree?

I don't claim that I know which moral theory or proposed hierarchy of values is the correct one but I claim to know that in principle there is one and that in principle it can be found and that in principle we are looking for precisely that.

What is "good" for humans? Long life? Pleasure? Satisfaction in accomplishment?

>>2230678
As said before, you don't understand the is-ought gap.

>>2230684

I don't know but we have many hypothesis about it. Maybe we will never know because human nature is simply too complex or one day we will know and then all moral questions will be answered.

>>2230689

I read a little about it but please explain to me why this gap is really there.

The grounds on which we decide how a being ought to be is what will lead to it's good life and if more beings are involved then the solution of course is what will lead to the good (or best possible life) for all of them.

I simply can not see how we can divorce "good" from what it is supposed to be good for.

A knife is good for cutting. There isn't some ideal good in some kind of platonic space to which we can compare everything and decide if it resembles it or not. Instead we need to look at what is actually there and then decide what it needs for it's fruition.

>>2230718
Knowing everything about humans are doesn't tell you how humans SHOULD be. Knowing the status quo doesn't define what OUGHT to be. What is "good" foe humans? Pick a metric.

>>2230718

In other words:

Prescriptive sentences ARE descriptive sentences. There is no fundamental difference. Prescriptive sentences are simply a certain kind of descriptive sentences - i.e. the sentences that describe what is good for a given sentient being.

>>2230734

Ok lets say that there are creatures who we would intuitively call evil or bad behaving (they cause many suffering to each other and kill and steal and lie etc.)

Lets suppose that these things are as evidently good for them as love is evidently good for many humans.

Now we know that their acts of cruelty are good FOR them.

I guess you are saying: "Okok that is good for them but they SHOULD be otherwise!"

Why? Why should they be otherwise? What they should be is being good according to their nature.

Now the problem is that the beings they cause the suffering to are not treated in a way that is good for them.

So the ideal solution would be to simulate all the killing and torturing (since it is good for them) while in reality nobody is hurt.

Again: In practice it is not that easy to determine let alone find realistic solutions but in principle it seems very easy to me.

>>2230734
>What is "good" foe humans?

I already say that I don't claim to know. But in principle it would be what a human (by having full knowledge of every other possibility) would choose for himself.

>>2230718
let's examine your knife analogy.
you start by examining the existence of the knife... asking what is it good for? Here we have the first problem, the knife has infinite possible utility. you judge it to be good for cutting because it was made to be good for cutting, but you ignore that it would make a decent decoration, or doorstop, or screwdriver, or projectile, or plumb-bob, or any number of other things.

However you make a human judgment, not a knife judgment. You decide that the knife is for cutting.

Having determined that the knife could cut, you decide that it should cut. However being a human you decide that the knife shouldn't cut you. The knife if sentient and made to cut would surely disagree... it would want to cut you. That's what it's made for, to cut. But you don't choose what is good for the knife, you choose what is good for you.

your analogy boils down to what is possible and useful (utilitarianism) and what is beneficial to you, humanism.

there is no logical basis to the judgments unless you are human, and not a knife.

the foundation of morality is the human experience, our dealings with one another
if i have a shirt, you know it's wrong to take it because it's not yours
we are social creatures and morality is simply a consequence of our coexistence

>>2230764
Kinfe:
Let's not overextend the analogy. Of course a knife hasn't an inherent purpose.
Neither do humans have an inherent purpose. But we can identify environments and actions that are beneficial for humans (as well as other sentient beings) and that (I thought) is the purpose of morality (to find out what is good for a being).

Conflicts:

There might as well be insolvable conflicts. What is good for one being might be bad for another. If there are then that is the limit of our morality and we have to accept it - but we still know what in principle we want to reach although in practice it might be impossible.

>there is no logical basis to the judgments unless you are human, and not a knife.

Why? I never said that I am solely interested in what is good for humans. I am just as much interested in what is good for other animals etc.

the apostle Paul also wrestled with this idea; he said, that knowing what was good, why would he do evil? if he knew something was wrong, yet did it anyway, what did that say about him?

eventually, he discerned that the spirit may know what is right and good, but the flesh is weak, and prone to evil.

>>2230776
get that bronze age bullshit out of here

unless you wanna show evidence for spirits/souls existing

>>2230776
>eventually, he discerned that the spirit may know what is right and good, but the flesh is weak, and prone to evil.

I think this is strange. In my mind all evil people (maybe I am one of them) simply don't know what they are doing. If they would fully understand what is wrong about their actions (as if their brains would run a perfect emulation of the beings consciousness which they mistreat, i.e. feel the pain or misery they are causing themselves) then they simply COULD not do it.

>>2230775
we could write a book on that comment alone, and several moralists have...

>There might as well be insolvable conflicts. What is good for one being might be bad for another.

all moral judgments produce benefit and detriment at the same time, on different metrics. when we judge a thing to be good, we're just saying that it is the best for us while producing the fewest problems for us and others. This is a very human judgment, still just humanism. Also because benefit/detriment change in changing situations, such judgments are moral relativism.

>If there are then that is the limit of our morality and we have to accept it - but we still know what in principle we want to reach although in practice it might be impossible.

again, humanism, though I sincerely doubt most people can agree on what they want, and even if they do, what they want in the short-term is rarely beneficial to them in the long run.

>I never said that I am solely interested in what is good for humans. I am just as much interested in what is good for other animals etc.

what is good for other organisms or our physical environment IS what is good for humans. We are part of life, we are part of the environment.

>>2230689
i really don't think it's that complicated; saying how a thing is is just as treacherous as saying how a thing ought to be; only in the ought-to-be world, we can narrowly define things to make intrinsic sense, whereas by saying what a thing is, we open ourselves to a myriad of perceptual difficulties, semantic problems and other error.

>>2230787
knowing that sleeping with a whore is wrong, how many men out of 100 can resist one's charms?

knowing that keeping a sack of found money is wrong, how many out of 100 would turn it in?

surely the news is replete with evidence of man's inhumanity to man; we do not have to go far to see how some men feel that flying 747's into buildings is "good".

>>2230803
How things ARE is empirically verifiable. How do you do that with determining what OUGHT to be?

>>2230796

I still don't understand why you are calling me a humanist?

I haven't even introduced any values yet let alone stated that humans are in any shape or form the centerpiece of morality. I simply used them as the most obvious example of what I speak about when I say, "good for xy".

I could just as well have said: What is good for a horse is what a horse would want/choose (if horses can) or be driven to out of all possible lifes it could live.

All the rest you are talking about seem to be pragmatic problems. Yes there are a lot, I know and I don't have a solution for them. All I am claiming is that we know in principle what our goal of morality is - therefore our morality has a foundation.

>>2230813
That's because we don't really agree on what's good. Or we give tacit assent to a standard of "good", but aren't willing to follow it, because we don't really believe it actually is "good" for us.

No one makes a decision while believing that it will make them less happy.

>>2230818
Ah, but what if horses don't know what's good for them, what really makes them happy? Then what they want is irrelevant to what is "good for them."

Go read some Plato. Perhaps The Republic. You seem to be thinking along those lines already anyway, but he's ahead of you.

>>2230818
I'm not just calling you a humanist, I am arguing that all morality is properly called humanism.

there is no objective logic to humanism, we make a selfish judgment based on our selfish view. This isn't supportable, but it's the only method that works for us some of the time. It's a good ballance, so long as you happen to be a human or an organism that humans like. Those that are destroyed also happen to be those that cannot complain.

The pragmatic problems are important if we're chasing utilitarianism, which we are.

>>2230813

They don't possess full knowledge. Simply saying "it's wrong" doesn't mean that a person really has full knowledge WHY it's wrong or how wrong it actually is.

>>2230817
>How do you do that with determining what OUGHT to be?

It's empirically verifiable.

Ax ought to be Ay.

A = sentient being who knows all there is to know about himself, i.e. all possible situations he could be in.

x = less preferable situation for A, than y i.e. A would not choose x if presented with y.

y = most preferable situation for A, i.e. A would choose y if presented with all possible situations.

>>2230817
are they? is a thing exactly the same to you as it is to me? can we trust our senses to tell us exactly what a thing is, and remains?

i really don't think so; you can't get people to agree on whether or not there is a God, and that's the most obvious thing in the universe

>>2230836
How simple - and worthless.

The set of A is the null set. I'm sure your philosophy works great for God.

>>2230848
Don't give me skepticist bullshit. There is an objective reality. If I pull a yellow handkerchief out of my pocket and you say it's blue, it's not just "your opinion, man.". You'd be wrong. "Blue" and "yellow" have quantifiable and empirical meanings in terms of reflectivity at different wavelengths of light.

>>2230849
>null set

I know. Do you think that I was claiming that we actually already know what is best for us? Of course not!

But if you want a more practical variation how about this:

Ax ought to be Ay.

A = sentient being who knows a lot about himself i.e. many situations he could be in.

x = less preferable situation for A, than y i.e. A would not choose x if presented with y.

y = more preferable situation for A, i.e. A would choose y if presented with many other situations including x.

>>2230867
It's still axiomatic. Your axiom is "maximise preferred choices".

>>2230867
I'm fine with self-determination of morality. The problem is the potential for conflicts. That's why we develop consensus morality to approximate what is best for everyone. And that consensus is that stealing is wrong, murder is wrong, etc.

Also, we tacitly assume that since we're all human, we basically have the same objective "good", which we only partially know.

>>2230874
>maximise preferred choices

You missed the point. The important part wasn't the choosing part but the KNOWLEDGE part.

A KNOWS what is good for him (on which he bases his choice) because he understands his nature.

I could just as well have said that somebody else who understands A's nature than A himself makes the choice. Or that no choice is made at all but that we find out was better for a being by interpreting it's brain waves or whatever.

Morality is simply a set of rules that we've decided to follow. It's part of something that separates us from animals. Humans don't like thinking we're animals, so we don't. Fighting, cheating, stealing, killing; these are all completely natural things.
And goodness. You should know that "good" and "evil" are completely relative, and that the line is blurred.

>>2230876

You also misunderstood me. See >>2230883

Self determination is just my example how we can empirically test what ought to be. It was the first I could think of but there are probably other ways to find out what is good for a being.

>>2230883
So what? You're still in the realm of unicorns. If you want to make this relevant, you could start developing a moral system that says determination and/or enforcement of morality should be done by those who are the most LIKE A. Like a meritocracy, but focused on control of ethical standards and their enforcement. Unless it turns out that enforcement is immoral.

>>2230892

I still don't get what the problem is. No I am not proposing a moral system nor do I claim to have a plan which way is the best to determine what is good. All I am saying that there are ways and the knowledge about what is good is essentially what morality is about - isn't it?

>>2230901
>the knowledge about what is good is essentially what morality is about - isn't it?
Yes. EVERYONE ITT has been harping on that, as far as I can tell. You've just been treating that knowledge as a given.

>>2230909

No I said several times that we don't have complete knowledge about what is good yet. But that we can find out by studying the world (especially sentient beings) - I have no idea why this is controversial.

>>2230919
If you don't know why it's controversial, I have to assume you haven't been reading the thread.

You can figure out what's "good", AFTER you define "good". You define it in terms of preferences. It may amaze you to learn that not everyone does.

>>2230919
>I have no idea why this is controversial.

simply because the saints of today are the criminals of tomorrow, and nobody wants to have the rules shift so that all the "good" they did in life is judged to be a sin worthy of death.

>>2230857
color is a wavelength reflected off of a surface; if i am colorblind, how can we agree on the color of a thing? you say it is a handkerchief, but my culture uses it as a death shroud; others say it is a blanket for a mouse.

truly, reality is a difficult thing to have everybody's agreement on anything.

>>2230919
>>2230919
> we don't have complete knowledge about what is good yet. But that we can find out by studying the world (especially sentient beings)
Not really. Your only options are getting good samples of what people self-report to be desirable to them (really shitty results, people generally don't know what would make them happy), or studying various lifestyles and choices and choosing some way to measure happiness. That's very difficult and fairly subjective, but it is giving some results, even if it's just self-reported satisfaction after the fact. This is much more accurate than asking people what they want, and assuming they're right.
For instance, there is an ideal salary, above which "mo' money mo' problems" really is true.
http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2010/09/07/the-perfect-salary-for-happiness-75000-a-year/
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2006/08/03/how-much-money-do-you-need-to-be-happy-hint-your-sex-life-m
atters-more/

>>2230951
It's official. Reality wants us to be socialists.

>>2230943
Nope. Color is EMPIRICALLY defined. The fact that you can't tell colors apart doesn't mean they don't exist. And I'm not talking about the subjective sensation of seeing a color.

If you want to be all anal about it, then there's a difference between sensation and perception. Don't get hung up on it. Unless you want to deny there is an objective reality at all - then you and I are going to have a problem.

>>2230957
Then I won't fight it.

Besides, how much money a year would it take to make YOU happy? Do you honesty have an answer you believe in?

>>2230968
Well, I thought the whole point was that I don't actually know that. I'm happy to go with whatever the study says. I'm not really a money person anyway, I'd do maths for free if I had to.

>>2230978
OK, carry on. Anyway.

I think people generally suck at knowing what would make them happy.

>>2230983
I find it curious that people examine biology and somehow come to the conclusion that happiness 'should' be anything other than a fleeting emotion.

a state of happiness or contentedness is the reward for a need fulfilled, an enduring state of happiness indicates stagnation.

If this is true then a happiness based morality would seem highly counterproductive.

>>2230965
i've already stated there's difficulty in having everyone agree with anything concerning the definition of reality and perception; you say yellow, i say canary, the guy down the road says antique white, none of us agree. your scientist says 570 nm, mine says 579 nm, the guy down the road's scientist says the ambient light was sodium.

without assumptions, and many of them, we cannot really agree about, well, anything. as far as your magic word "emperically" is concerned, you also have data problems, inherent error, and perceived error.

so no, it's not simply being contrarian to force the conversation to define its terms. "good" has a myriad of meanings; whether or not "good" can be "emperically" derived from what i call fallen man is quite a debate, and not for the simple minded.

>>2231026
>whether or not "good" can be "emperically" derived from what i call fallen man is quite a debate, and not for the simple minded.

>>2231032
Forgot my unimpressed face.

>>2231026
>i've already stated there's difficulty in having everyone agree with anything concerning the definition of reality and perception; you say yellow, i say canary, the guy down the road says antique white, none of us agree. your scientist says 570 nm, mine says 579 nm, the guy down the road's scientist says the ambient light was sodium.
This is really, really weak argument.

The scientists agree that the light is 575 +- 5 nm.

>>2230983

OP again. I don't even deny this. That's why in ma example I specifically mentioned that the person has to have extensive knowledge (or at best all the knowledge there can be) about himself (or if somebody else chooses for him then that person needs to possess the knowledge).

Knowledge was my keyword the entire time.

Lets take more simple animals like mice for example. I don't think it would be hard for humans to create a mice paradise since we know much about them and there isn't as much to find out about as in the case of humans.

But in principle nothing should hinder us from being able to do the same thing for human beings as well.

>>2231036
why does that guy look like Gabe Kaplan?

>>2231043
I don't think it would be hard for humans to create a mice paradise
How, exactly, do you quantify mouse wellbeing? Health, we can do pretty well. But general happiness and wellbeing?

>>2231041
so the scientists agree on a range. that's kinda funny. and that range would be equally useful everywhere else in the universe, under all conditions, right?

>>2231043
what is the basis for the assumption that a "paradise" is beneficial to a being?

things we want are seldom good for us in large quantity...

>>2231053
This.
If you let a cow into a field of wheat, it will eat itself to death. If you put mice in a large enclosure and given them unlimited free food, it becomes a horrifying hellhole as soon as there isn't enough space for the mice.

And if you give a human a very large pile of recreational drugs...

>>2231057
>And if you give a human a very large pile of recreational drugs...
I wouldn't take any. Not ALL humans are wired to make themselves miserable in return for short-term pleasure.

>>2231043
down this path lies Auschwitz, the Killing Fields, Darfur, and Rwanda

>>2231074
>Not ALL humans are wired to make themselves miserable in return for short-term pleasure.

that's simplifying and reversing the mechanism.
All humans are wired to alleviate short-term misery in order to gain pleasure.

sometimes we invent or precipitate misery just so we can alleviate it and get the pleasure reward... counterintuitively a lot of our pleasure-seeking is aimed at creating crisis just so we have a pressure to overcome.

It would seem we need our stress and problems in order to exercise our fitness and experience pleasure.

ascetic self-denial is just a more direct path to the pressures we need.

>>2231103
This was a Star Trek episode. No, wait, it was Star Trek V.

>>2231100
eugenics,just like morality, suffers from some glaring is-ought problems.

>>2230761
>In principle it would be what a human (by having full knowledge of every other possibility) would choose for himself.

That's at least a start toward a definition of "good," which is the main problem. But as others have pointed out, it needs to be extended so we have a definition of what a "best" choice means when that choice affects multiple people.

We can throw some math in if you like, since this is a math board, after all. You can use your framework to define a measure of "goodness," (the usual term is "utility") for one person in the manner of John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Morgenstern_utility_theorem

Unfortunately, the utility function is only defined up to a translations and scaling. In other words, if U(x) is your utility function where x is a choice, then a*U(x) + b where a > 0 is also a possible utility function for you. That makes it impossible to add up utility under this definition for multiple people so as to define "the most good for the most people."

In general, figuring out what good or even rational (consider the Prisoner's dilemma!) behavior entails when there are multiple agents involved is a tricky problem.