Being, Good, and Evil

[Portofino]

First, I (having bracketed my metaphysics) would not take goodness in the world to be evidence against an evil God, so to me, step 3 is false.

That is honest of you. I’m not sure you would not be in the minority, there – for example, it’s maintained that God sustains us in every moment of our existence, and it seems to be believed (by Christians) that this is a benevolent thing to do.

would alternatively deny that an evil god could exist because evil is a privation, and a purely actual being could not be fully evil.
polytropos;11160103:

Very interesting. I think that arguing for evil as a privation possibly begs the question as to what “good” and “evil” are, in the first place. In other words, once you know what is right, only then do you know what is a privation of what is right.

So, you cannot argue for evil as privation unless you are already know that good is good, and that evil is evil. And from there, you say, “so why does evil exist?” And the response then becomes “evil is privation of what ought to be.”

The problem is, I’m not sure how one could know that good is good, evil is evil, at the level of purely philosophical argument that Aquinas is pursuing (or does he take this from revelation?) For example, a neutral observer could question whether compassion could be a weakness, because it could lead to being killed by one’s enemy (one of Julius Caesar’s fatal mistakes is that he pardoned his enemies). Survival would seem to be a final end of human beings, and reason is indeed a means to that end (including reasoning to outsmart one’s enemy).

First you have to demonstrate what is good, what is evil; and only then can you determine, or observe, that evil is privation. If your definition of good is earthbound, however – good is survival – then it’s hard to get to moral goodness. Yet how can you get to moral goodness, without either putting trust in human morality or divine revelation?
polytropos;11160103:

other problem is that the Thomistically inclined need not rely on theodicies at all, so showing that theodicies fail would be trivial.

No, they needn’t rely on them because they claim to have proven A. that God is good (well, that kind of makes theodicies redundant! ) and B. that God is not the creator of evil. I suppose Aquinas handles the problem of evil in a more a priori way.

Come to think of it, that is the theodicy of Thomas; it’s just a different theodicy than that offered by Leibniz, or offered by a more “traditional” theological explanation (Satan, the Fall, free will, original sin). Aquinas does, at one point, maintain that God is the cause of evil when it has to do with punishment of sin, so he is invoking revelation in that instance.

 

[polytropos]

Would you have an explanation of why final causes in nature so often fail? In other words, would you have an explanation for why natural evil exists?

No, I am not explaining natural evil, just arguing that there is not a contradiction between evil and the existence of God as Goodness Itself.

What I think is logically incontrovertible is that there is no imperative that the creation of a perfect Creator not be as perfect as itself (indeed, Heaven would refute anyone who would claim the contrary).

Well, it is conceivable that God could have created a world in which everything which exists perfectly instantiates its form (it is debatable whether such a world could have free beings, or whether such a world could be material, but such points are not relevant to my argument). He could not make a world which is as perfect as he is, however. A brief justification:

Consider a world in which every being perfectly instantiates its form.
Consider another world identical to the above, containing one additional perfect being.
The second world is better than the first.

So creation cannot be Goodness Itself.

So what is Aquinas’ explanation for the reason why a perfect Creator made an imperfect Creation? With humans, we are talking about free will. But I am talking about nature here.

I don’t think Aquinas has an explanation for it, nor do I think there is one (although I might need to look into it). In the same way that it does not make sense to speak of God as having moral obligations, it does not make sense to speak of Him as acting for reasons. God did not have to create. He was already perfect. There is no way that creation could increase God’s goodness. Creation was a complete gratuity. To say that God needed a reason for creation is to say that He had some end or goal to fulfill, or some lack to satisfy, which He did not.

Again, if revelation is necessary, by all means invoke it. But if Aquinas is saying that nature – which is not God – must contain imperfection and evil (privation), then he is making an assumption that does not logically follow. I see no logical reason why nature would not be a perfect chip off the old block of a perfect Creator, especially an omnipotent one. There is no logical reason why the created realm of an absolutely perfect creator would need to be a faded facsimile of the perfection of the creator.

Creation could have been perfect (in the sense previously described). It does not need to contain imperfection. But God was also in no way obligated to create something without imperfection, and He created the world that He created.

 

[polytropos]

Not sure what he means by that; perhaps, “don’t bring any of your metaphysical assumptions into the argument; attempt to be neutral?”

That is part of it. This step was accentuated after a dialogue Law had with Edward Feser, so it may not have been as clear in the original paper. The point, really, is that Law was not particularly aware that good and evil might have an asymmetrical metaphysical grounding in the classical theistic tradition. His point is not really to argue for the viability of an evil God but to claim that, since theists would not accept reverse-theodicies, they should not accept theodicies at all. The bracketing of metaphysics is necessary because the challenge requires that an evil God be ruled out on the basis of empirical observation of the good.

But that, to me, seems rigged. Again, I don’t see why anyone should assume anything about the existence of any sort of God absent any metaphysical basis (at least, for the purposes of philosophy).

This does depend on one’s definition of goodness.

This is part of the problem with the argument. I agree it does depend on one’s definition of goodness, which is why it does not make sense to bracket one’s metaphysics before considering the question of God’s existence.

Stephen Law believes that a common-sense, colloquial definition of good is sufficient. But I do not think that works. This is, I think, part of the problem with the problem of evil. Non-theists generally assume that their own definition of good is what is intended in the proposition “God is good.” But such statements have deep and nuanced philosophical backgrounds, and what it means to say “God is good” is a large topic.

It’s a wash – either could theoretically be possible, once you say, “we cannot understand God’s ways”

Well, I think one would have to say it could go either way, at least if you ignore metaphysics. Goodness in the world is not evidence against an evil God. Evil in the world is not evidence against a good God. (At least considered in themselves, absent of philosophical reflection.)

The trade-off, of course, is that you cannot point to the good stuff as proof that God loves you, either. I don’t think you’re doing that, polytropos, but I daresay you are in the minority there, as regards Christians. When they feel God’s love, of course they believe that it is really God’s love, that they are feeling. And when they don’t feel God’s love, they say that this is the misunderstanding. But it could, theoretically, be the reverse.

Hmm. A couple points to make:

• Given the privation view of evil, evil cannot be causally produced by God, but God is the source of all good. Not in the “miraculous” sense that is often supposed, but as Goodness Itself and the First Cause of all good.
• People may be picking up, implicitly, on the reality of good. There is, as I’ve noted, an asymmetry to good and evil. In that sense, contra Stephen Law, I do think we can evaluate the world and say that the good beats out the evil, and it is plausible that people pick up on this intuitively. Metaphysical truths are truths whether everyone knows them or not, and I think they are implicit in Catholicism.

I do think I may be in the minority. But I have tried to study these issues in detail, and I do not think everyone needs to. The Church Fathers, like St. Augustine, were aware of many of these nuances (although in a neo-Platonist rather than Thomist light). This is part of the reason why Church authority and tradition is important. The modern formulation of the problem of evil can put Christians in an awkward position, especially considering that it is, in my opinion, formidable against many types of Christianity that have deviated from more classical, Thomist lines. And that is probably why we see many convoluted defenses when, indeed, no such thing is necessary.

 

[Portofino]

Creation could have been perfect (in the sense previously described). It does not need to contain imperfection. But God was also in no way obligated to create something without imperfection, and He created the world that He created.

Ok, I appreciate your honesty, and the time you are taking to respond (I knew you are a college student and that it is “back to school time” ).

I may be skeptical – stubbornly skeptical – to yours, Aquinas’, or Feser’s arguments, but I will say that you present these arguments in a most formidable and forceful manner.

I think your most formidable opponent, philosophically, would be David Hume. It is hard to catch Hume in a fallacy (not sure if anyone’s done it). What they seem to try to argue, regarding Hume, is that his radical skepticism undermines itself.

I recently discovered an exchange in absentia between a Christian fideist (who doesn’t believe that reason can get the job done) and Feser himself. The article (by the Humean fideist) and the response to the article (by Feser) were published in “First Things.” [note: in terms of sticking with the topic of your thread, the below has a bearing (by implication) on final causes, teleology, and the definition of goodness, so the below discussion of natural law can be considered primarily in that connection].

firstthings.com/article/2013/02/is-ought-and-natures-laws-1

firstthings.com/onthesquare/2013/03/a-christian-hart-a-humean-head

The author of the first article – a Christian of faith --makes a Humean argument and makes the contention that it cannot be proven that a discerned order of nature imposes moral obligations (excerpt follows; and this is my position, as well):

"insuperable problems arise when—in part out of a commendable desire to speak to secular society in ways it can understand, in part out of some tacit quasi-Kantian notion that moral philosophy must yield clear and universally binding imperatives—the natural law theorist insists that the moral meaning of nature should be perfectly evident to any properly reasoning mind, regardless of religious belief or cultural formation.

Thus, allegedly, the testimony of nature should inform any rightly attentive intellect that abortion is murder, that lying is wrong, that marriage should be monogamous, that we should value charity above personal profit, and that it is wicked (as well as extremely discourteous) to eat members of that tribe that lives over in the next valley. “Nature,” however, tells us nothing of the sort, at least not in the form of clear commands; neither does it supply us with hypotaxes of moral obligation. In neither an absolute nor a dependent sense—neither as categorical nor as hypothetical imperatives, to use the Kantian terms—can our common knowledge of our nature or of the nature of the universe at large instruct us clearly in the content of true morality.

For one thing, as far as any categorical morality is concerned, Hume’s bluntly stated assertion that one cannot logically derive an “ought” from an “is” happens to be formally correct. Even if one could exhaustively describe the elements of our nature, the additional claim that we are morally obliged to act in accord with them, or to prefer natural uses to unnatural, would still be adventitious to the whole ensemble of facts that this description would comprise.

The assumption that the natural and moral orders are connected to one another in any but a purely pragmatic way must be logically antecedent to our interpretation of the world; it is a belief about nature, but not a natural belief as such; it is a supernatural judgment that renders natural reality intelligible in a particular way. I know of many a stout defender of natural law who is quick to dismiss Hume’s argument, but who—when pressed to explain why—can do no better than to resort to a purely conditional argument: If one is (for instance) to live a fully human life, then one must . . . (etc.). But, in supplementing a dubious “is” with a negotiable “if,” one certainly cannot arrive at a categorical “ought.”

 

[polytropos]

I think that arguing for evil as a privation possibly begs the question as to what “good” and “evil” are, in the first place. In other words, once you know what is right, only then do you know what is a privation of what is right.

I think the privation view of evil is pretty plausible on the grounds I’ve established in this topic, which are based on how we talk about good and evil (Good things are things that succeed at being what we expect them to be; they are worse insofar that they fail to be what they ought to be). That is the “epistemologically lite” version I have been talking about. It is also definitional, so it isn’t exactly question-begging.

So even if there is some epistemological barrier that prevents us from knowing what is good, I think we would be required to hold that a purely actual being is good, given this definition. A purely actual being could have no lack. For this part of the argument, we are not even assuming that we know what is good for everything else. We just know it would not make sense to call a purely actual being less than good.

What I do assume is that final causes can be known. I know many would disagree with that. But that is more necessary to natural-law morality than to determining whether God is good.

First you have to demonstrate what is good, what is evil; and only then can you determine, or observe, that evil is privation. If your definition of good is earthbound, however – good is survival – then it’s hard to get to moral goodness. Yet how can you get to moral goodness, without either putting trust in human morality or divine revelation?

The evil as privation view holds even if we misapprehend the good. When someone skips mass on Sunday, they do it because they take extra sleep to be good; they take going to mass and missing out on sleep to deprive them of what is proper to them. They are wrong, but they are still taking a position that the good is convertible with being and evil is a privation of good. They have just misapprehended their own final causes.

So getting to specific moral goodness would require knowing final causes and taking more of a natural law/relevation approach.

 

[polytropos]

Ok, I appreciate your honesty, and the time you are taking to respond (I knew you are a college student and that it is “back to school time” ).

Ha, thank you. I will try to get back to you another day.

 

[Bagheera]

You are reading in a different notion of “desirable” than Aristotle and Aquinas intend. It is not meant (directly) as “I want that thing.” (This is, I think, why people are asking “desirable to whom?”). What Aquinas means is desirability in the sense of final causes, ie. every thing desires (tends toward) its end.

This is the most important piece which shows that the A-T philosophy in untenable on rational ground.

The process starts with another incorrect usage of a word (in this case: “desire”). We are confronted with either a nonsensical use of a word (if the original one was “desire”), or an incorrect translation of one (if the original word was something else…what was it?). But let’s accept your clarification, so we can move forward.

What the heck are “final causes” that beings “tend” toward to? In the case of inanimate matter it does not “tend” to any “end”. Matter cannot be created or destroyed. Living matter tends toward “death”. Is that the “good” we should consider? If we consider bacteria which cause fatal diseases, is the “good” of these microorganisms taken as the ability to kill the host? (Not that Aquinas or Aristotle had any idea about microorganisms. Since they lived in an era of incredible ignorance, they were speculating - and speculating incorrectly).

Living organisms attempt to maintain their homeostasis in a variable environment. To call this “desire” is nonsense. But even if one considers this incorrect usage of a word, what is “good” about a parasite which needs to kill its host to maintain its own homeostasis? Life is a competition for limited resources. Life is constant “kill and eat” or “be killed and eaten”. Is this what Aquinas considers “good”? By the way vegetation does not “eat” its prey, but the fight for the limited resources is still there. Trees develop a large foliage, which is detrimental to the grass and shrubs under the canopy.

Aristotle and Aquinas were smart fellers for their age, but all their speculation is outdated now. They should be read as examples of how to conduct empty speculations, which have nothing to do with reality.

 

[Portofino]

This is the most important piece which shows that the A-T philosophy in untenable on rational ground.

The process starts with another incorrect usage of a word (in this case: “desire”). We are confronted with either a nonsensical use of a word (if the original one was “desire”), or an incorrect translation of one (if the original word was something else…what was it?). But let’s accept your clarification, so we can move forward.

I agree that the term desire, in that context, would be creating a new signification of the word. It would be like saying that “the heart is motivated to pump blood” or that “the heart desires to pump blood.”

Aquinas cites Book of I of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, per desirability, and I re-read the relevant passage in Aristotle. Aristotle, at least, does use desire in the sense of human intentionality. I can’t speak for Aquinas, but Aristotle does not conflate desire with* telos* [end], except in the sense that “all humans desire happiness, which is how we can know it is our telos.” He derives the latter from the former [as does Jefferson; “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are our natural rights because that is what the vast majority of us naturally desire].

When you divorce desire too radically from telos, via an appeal to nature (you don’t decide what your telos is, nature does), one arrives at your point that, “all living things are ordered towards death.” This is absolutely right, and I think is irrefutable; it’s another way of looking at it. The human body is biodegradable and its death contributes to new plant life and the sustaining of animal life (scavengers derive food and nutrients; soil becomes more fertile). In its own way, the death of animals (including humans) is as vitally important to nature as fallen and dead leaves from deciduous trees. Nature, it seems, does not privilege human life over non-human life (did not get the memo that we’re more important ); as Shakespeare put it, “we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots.” The human body is natural food and natural fertilizer, in the great scheme of things.

You would have to say, “death is not our telos – not a goal towards which we should consciously strive – because all humans fear death, recoil from death as a great evil” – but you would be back with relying on human desire, with a more common sense understanding of desire. Death is evil, even though all all life – from a certain point of view – is ordered towards death. The body is ordered towards mortality and, if mortality never occurred (neither in human, animal, or plant life) the ecosystem as we know it could not exist.

To go from Aristotle’s fairly amoral naturalistic ethics, to Aquinas’ Christian ethics, is very difficult through a study of the operations of nature, I think (Aristotle, per his understanding of ethics as the golden mean, likely would have agreed that there is such thing as being “excessively compassionate”). For instance, is it an evil if a saint sacrifices his life for the sake of love of neighbor? He failed to achieve his telos, which was survival; non-survival is an evil and a lack (of life; it’s a privation of the good of continued life). Yet the saint values something above survival, goodness that transcends natural survival.

Transcending nature – rising above nature – means that it is not nature we are obeying, it is a transcendent moral law. Is this discoverable through nature? Is this discoverable through human culture itself? It depends on what human culture one is talking about.

I can’t help but come back to the example of natural law and good and evil as it relates to sexuality. If the body is ordered towards procreation, shouldn’t the body procreate? Yet the Christian does not believe we are a slave to our bodies; there are higher values at work, and celibacy is one of them. Yet one could argue that, by not procreating, the human body in question has not actualized its telos, one aspect of which – a very important aspect of which – is to reproduce new life, that of which it is capable and that towards which it is ordered.

The question of engaging in non-procreative sex is almost secondary; to argue that misuse is morally evil, but not using that which was ordered towards being used, is not, is a particular way of looking at things (which I certainly understand – celibacy was important to Christians before Aquinas, and his reading of Aristotle, came into the picture ). But it’s perspectival, nonetheless – it’s based on a particular point of view, and there’s no inherent illogic in choosing to view things differently. Indeed, to say that it is unnatural to remain celibate for life – that it thwarts the telos of an individual human organism, equipped with the potential to procreate, and for whom the actualization of that potential would a form of perfection-- is not very difficult to argue.

 

[polytropos]

The process starts with another incorrect usage of a word (in this case: “desire”). We are confronted with either a nonsensical use of a word (if the original one was “desire”), or an incorrect translation of one (if the original word was something else…what was it?).

This reminds me of another atheist on these forums who insisted that the First Way was flawed because “motion” could not refer to change in general. I honestly do not know the nuances of this particular translation that uses “desire.” I don’t know what the word in Latin was. But translations sometimes aim to be literal, and “desire” could have meant something else entirely 700 years ago.

But none of that really matters, since in the context of Aquinas’s metaphysics, his intent is clear.

What the heck are “final causes” that beings “tend” toward to? In the case of inanimate matter it does not “tend” to any “end”.

I have specified what this means a few times. You could respond to the DNA example that has been brought up in a few previous posts, if you’d like.

Living matter tends toward “death”. Is that the “good” we should consider? If we consider bacteria which cause fatal diseases, is the “good” of these microorganisms taken as the ability to kill the host?

This has been covered a couple times as well. “Good” does not mean “good for everyone” or “good for humans” (likewise, “desirable” does not mean “desirable to humans” or “desirable to a conscious observer”). Portofino raised the hen and fox example. It is bad for the hen for its eggs to be stolen. It is good for the fox to eat the hen’s eggs. So it is good for the bacteria to infect things and reproduce. It is bad for humans to be infected and get sick.

Life is constant “kill and eat” or “be killed and eaten”. Is this what Aquinas considers “good”?

Different entities have different goods. What is good for a thing depends on its formal and final causes. In some cases, those final causes conflict. That does not mean competition is a good as such.

 

[polytropos]

I agree that the term desire, in that context, would be creating a new signification of the word. It would be like saying that “the heart is motivated to pump blood” or that “the heart desires to pump blood.”

Again, this is not how “desire” is being used. The claim is not that the heart is conscious and motivated. The claim is that it is natural for a heart to pump blood, according to its form (a contrary claim would be something like “the heart incidentally happens to pump blood, and that function is not inherent in its form”).

Aquinas cites Book of I of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, per desirability, and I re-read the relevant passage in Aristotle. Aristotle, at least, does use desire in the sense of human intentionality. I can’t speak for Aquinas, but Aristotle does not conflate desire with* telos* [end], except in the sense that “all humans desire happiness, which is how we can know it is our telos.” He derives the latter from the former [as does Jefferson; “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are our natural rights because that is what the vast majority of us naturally desire].

I have not read Nicomachean Ethics. But there are a few points to make. Aquinas is not, I don’t think, denying that people regard what they desire as good, and they do so because they believe it will make them happy. (And I am not claiming that Aristotle denies that either.) Where Aristotle and Aquinas differ from post-Enlightenment thinkers like Jefferson is that they believed that, even though people act in such a way to achieve what they believe will make them happy, there is some objective standard of good. That the will tends toward what it perceives to be good is not something that Aquinas would disagree with.

An example: a gluttonous man will eat quite a lot because he desires to eat and he thinks eating will make him happy. Aristotle and Aquinas agree on that point. What they disagree with is whether it is actually good for a man to eat until he is morbidly obese. He might always perceive it as good, but in doing so, he is violating the virtue of temperance or moderation, which is proper to his human form qua rational.

“The pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration is quite different, in certain ways. Aristotle and Aquinas are making an observation that the will tends toward its perceived happiness. Jefferson is stating that the pursuit of happiness (which is not defined and has no ontological basis) is a self-evident right.

When you divorce desire too radically from telos, via an appeal to nature (you don’t decide what your telos is, nature does), one arrives at your point that, “all living things are ordered towards death.” This is absolutely right, and I think is irrefutable; it’s another way of looking at it. The human body is biodegradable and its death contributes to new plant life and the sustaining of animal life (scavengers derive food and nutrients; soil becomes more fertile). In its own way, the death of animals (including humans) is as vitally important to nature as fallen and dead leaves from deciduous trees.

All living things are ultimately ordered toward death, but you might be making more of that than it says. That does not mean that life is not preferable; living things generally live until they succumb to natural causes. Death’s inevitability does not mean death is a good thing (although, in some sense, it might be) or that death is an end to be desired at any stage of a thing’s development.

Then, again, to say that a human body might contribute to the fertility of the soil is unremarkable. What is bad for a human might be good for a tree that grows in refertilized soil. Again, “good” refers to degree of perfection to which something instantiates its form, not to what is necessarily preferable for everything in existence.

 

[polytropos]

I think your most formidable opponent, philosophically, would be David Hume. It is hard to catch Hume in a fallacy (not sure if anyone’s done it). What they seem to try to argue, regarding Hume, is that his radical skepticism undermines itself.

I haven’t read Hume, although he is on my (rather long) reading list, and I am familiar with what he had to say about cosmological arguments/causality and the problem of evil. I don’t know about his skepticism undermining itself, but it seems to me like certain things he claimed were just false (ie. it is easy to imagine that something could occur without a cause).

I recently discovered an exchange in absentia between a Christian fideist (who doesn’t believe that reason can get the job done) and Feser himself. The article (by the Humean fideist) and the response to the article (by Feser) were published in “First Things.” [note: in terms of sticking with the topic of your thread, the below has a bearing (by implication) on final causes, teleology, and the definition of goodness, so the below discussion of natural law can be considered primarily in that connection].

Yes, the debate actually goes on a bit longer. If you search for “Hart” on Feser’s blog, you would find some of the responses.

[quoting Hart]For one thing, as far as any categorical morality is concerned, Hume’s bluntly stated assertion that one cannot logically derive an “ought” from an “is” happens to be formally correct. Even if one could exhaustively describe the elements of our nature, the additional claim that we are morally obliged to act in accord with them, or to prefer natural uses to unnatural, would still be adventitious to the whole ensemble of facts that this description would comprise.

I would take final causality to be an “ought.” I think Hart is generally right that getting from a Humean conception of nature to an “ought” would be difficult. But final ends are what things are supposed to tend toward; that is simply what they are. If final causes do exist in nature, then I think there are moral obligations.

There are certainly some other objections one could make. One might insist that even if there are final causes, we don’t have to act in accord with them. And I would agree that one is capable of acting in opposition to final causes. But that does not remove the moral obligation. Even if one is not aware that there are final causes, the obligation is still there.

Another dimension, which is particularly relevant in Thomism, is that the intellectual aspect of our souls is taken to be immaterial and eternal. The natural end of the intellect and will is to be directed toward truth. So in that sense, while one can ignore final causes, doing so may have eternal consequences (a view shared with Christian revelation).

 

[Bahman]

It is not really viable to say that one could simply define good as a privation of evil and conclude that there is an evil God since God could have no privations and therefore could in no way be good. The reason is that there is an asymmetry in the concepts of good and evil (which is indeed why evil is a privation of good in the first place).

I don’t understand why there is asymmetry between good and bad (they are just different from each other). I define good as absence of evil as you define evil as absence of good.

Good is the fulfillment of final causes.

And what if we will never have a sense of what that ultimate Good means and feel. What if turns out that that ultimate Good was simple evil being that we were constantly resisting against it.

 

[Bagheera]

I honestly do not know the nuances of this particular translation that uses “desire.” I don’t know what the word in Latin was. But translations sometimes aim to be literal, and “desire” could have meant something else entirely 700 years ago.

This is very interesting. If even the apologists have no idea what the word could have meant 700 years ago, then on what grounds do they present this as an argument?

But none of that really matters, since in the context of Aquinas’s metaphysics, his intent is clear.

Clear? It is merely a speculation. Obviously it is not your personal fault that you use an undefined word. It is the fault of the translators who did such a lousy job. The use of “desire” in this context is not simply nonsensical, it is positively misleading. Nevertheless, we can dispense with question.

This has been covered a couple times as well. “Good” does not mean “good for everyone” or “good for humans” (likewise, “desirable” does not mean “desirable to humans” or “desirable to a conscious observer”). Portofino raised the hen and fox example. It is bad for the hen for its eggs to be stolen. It is good for the fox to eat the hen’s eggs. So it is good for the bacteria to infect things and reproduce. It is bad for humans to be infected and get sick.

Now we are getting closer in mutual understanding. I have no problem with your analysis. Actually, this is exactly what I assert. “Good” is what promotes life, or makes it more enjoyable. “Bad” is what hinders life, or make it less enjoyable. As such “good” becomes a synonym for “useful” and “beneficial”. The opposite of “good” is “harmful”, which is synonymous with “bad”. There are zillions of “good” and “bad” events, all depending upon which “living entity” is under consideration.

Different entities have different goods. What is good for a thing depends on its formal and final causes. In some cases, those final causes conflict. That does not mean competition is a good as such.

Apart from the nonsensical usage of “formal and final causes” this exactly correct. “Good” is a relative term, based upon the “living entity” we refer to - as in “what is good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander”. So why are we arguing? We say the same thing. Good is relative, bad is also relative. The only unresolved question is the meaning of “evil”. I present the definition of “intentional causation of harm (or bad)”. Crystal clear, no ambiguity.

I would take final causality to be an “ought.”

It would help again if you translated this “final causality” into a meaningful term.

But final ends are what things are supposed to tend toward; that is simply what they are.

Also a definition of “final end” would be useful. Moreover, you use the term “supposed to”. That also presupposes a conscious observer, and a point of view. Is this “supposed to” as meaningless as the “desire”? Or is there a correct translation to it?

 

[tonyrey]

belorg Reasoning can be useful. That’s not an axiom.

		 		 	 	 "can" is a gross understatement because your capacity for  reasoning is the very foundation of your claim to be rational and worthy  of attention. To belittle reason is to belittle your own arguments and  conclusions. If you claim it is  worthless you are spouting nonsense.

No response - unsurprisingly!

 

[Portofino]

An example: a gluttonous man will eat quite a lot because he desires to eat and he thinks eating will make him happy.

Most individuals can agree that gluttony can have harmful consequences and that, if one engages in gluttonous behavior with a desire to be happy, there may be unintended consequences to such behavior that lead to unhappiness or sickness. Of course, to call it morally wrong to be a glutton is different than calling it a lack of prudence or wisdom. Smoking cigarettes or eating fatty foods are not immoral, in the minds of most people; unhealthy, yes.

I’m not even confident that a virtue ethics could get one to the designation of immorality. We might say, common sensically, that someone who has no discipline – say, to prevent from overindulging – lacks character or lacks the “virtue” of discipline. Still, most of us don’t say he’s immoral in the sense of “he’s a bad person.” In this understanding of things, of course, the virtue of discipline is not an abstraction that has no connection with human wants and desires. In this case, virtue is a discipline because it would keep him healthy and fit – feeling better in body and mind; living longer, perhaps.

I think common ground breaks down most severely in precisely the example that seems of great importance to Feser, namely the proper use of one’s sexual organs. You see, with gluttony, we don’t just say “gluttony is inherently wrong” – in fact, most do not say that. Instead, they say, “gluttony leads to obesity, which leads to ill health.” Thus, they give a concrete reason why gluttony is not desirable, including for the glutton himself. They do not make an appeal to what nature desires, intends, or purposes.

In the case of insistence on the proper use of one’s sexual organs, it is not easy to demonstrate harm, in the way that one can demonstrate harm related to overeating, binge drinking, anorexia, drug use, or something like self-cutting. Does it ruin the health of the body? Potentially – but, then again, almost anything could ruin the health of the body. So it does not, in and of itself, ruin the health of the body; unlike gluttony or alcoholism, it is not by definition immoderate.

If everyone engaged in it, never using the sexual organs to procreate, would the human race become extict? Yes, and that would be an example of harm. Yet celibate individuals, who do not use their sexual organs at all (presumably) would also create an extinct human race, if their behavior were the universal rule. As for those who “misuse” their sexual organs, they could both engage in non-procreative behaviors and, at some point, procreate, and thus the non-procreative behavior could not be demonstrated to be harmful or undesirable (again, with gluttony, it does not take much to convince someone of the undesirability of such behavior, upon rational reflection).

But if all you have is respect for what you understand to be the natural order of things – with no demonstrable harm, just the insistence that one ought to respect nature’s rules – as one understands them – then one is asserting the faith that nature imposes moral obligations on us, even when violating nature causes no demonstrable injury to either our desires, or to the desire of others. And this is what “the world” does not understand and, indeed, has no faith or conviction about.

Jefferson is stating that the pursuit of happiness (which is not defined and has no ontological basis) is a self-evident right.

What is interesting is that Jefferson does not posit a right to happiness, only a right to pursue happiness. But I think he understands that what he calls a natural right is actually a social right, and he asserts it to be self-evident. Well, if it is a social right that you are talking about, then asserting it to be self-evident does makes it a de facto reality (since, as far as society is concerned, which is man-made, human beings make the rules).

It’s true that he invokes the Creator, though he may have been seeking common ground between Deists, Trinitarian Christians (such as Anglicans) and Unitarians. I don’t mean to put words into Jefferson’s mouth but, if one understands his idea in terms of a “social contract”, then he doesn’t need to ground civil rights ontologically (if such a thing were possible ).

That does not mean that life is not preferable; living things generally live until they succumb to natural causes.

I agree, but not based on what I think nature wants or doesn’t want. In the long view, everything in nature is indeed oriented towards death. Where I think one resolutely rejects this reasoning is by relying on human desire, not on visceral desire but on desire aided by reason, such as “I desire pleasure and long life; I also desire to eat food that tastes the best; however, if I eat food only considering what gives my palate the most pleasure, I may undermine my goal of pleasure and long life.” Again, what nature has ordered or not ordered is besides the point, according to this thinking. If going against nature causing suffering or the thwarting of one’s desires – the wisdom and prudence that wants to avoid misery or shortened life – then one follows nature. But if going against nature has no discernible consequences – no demonstrated harm, even upon reflection – then one doesn’t take the extra step of saying that one is going to obey nature…for nature’s sake And this is where I think the belief in final ends – such as Feser defends it, vis-a-vis the purportedly proper use of one’s sexual organs – loses most people. Of course, one is free to obey whatever moral dictates in nature one discerns, even when a violation of those dictates causes no demonstrable harm to human interests (either to self or others).

 

[Portofino]

p.s. It’s not Jefferson’s place to define happiness for the purposes of a document such as the Declaration of Independence, of course; and a component of liberalism is that of individual rights, where happiness is something that is bound to be largely self-defined.

In a broader sense, you could say that even protection of religious liberty is in the name of the pursuit of happiness, as one understands it, with the limitation being, “so long as one’s pursuit of happiness does not infringe upon the life or liberty of others.” If Jefferson had said, “you are only entitled to happiness as I define it” – or “as my religion defines it” – then you are bound to make a great number of people…unhappy.

Perhaps, for example, someone defines the right to happiness as existing only insofar as it is in conformance with the natural law; therefore, celibacy is forbidden, because it is against the purpose of nature. The poet Blake observed, “one law for the lion and ox is oppression” (I would substitute, for example, lion and ox with “conservative Muslim” and “conservative Jew”).

As for Jefferson himself, he read deeply in the conception of happiness put forth by the ancients, particularly Epicurus. In terms of his personal sentiments, happiness was not a wishy-washy or vague notion, but a combination of desire (an irreducible element, if the question is happiness) with due rational reflection as to the best means of serving desire intelligently:

“I take the liberty of observing that you are not a true disciple of our master Epicurus, in indulging the indolence to which you say you are yielding. One of his canons, you know, was that “that indulgence which presents a greater pleasure, or produces a greater pain, is to be avoided.” Your love of repose will lead, in its progress, to a suspension of healthy exercise, a relaxation of mind, an indifference to everything around you, and finally to a debility of body, and hebetude of mind, the farthest of all things from the happiness which the well-regulated indulgences of Epicurus ensure; fortitude, you know, is one of his four cardinal virtues. That teaches us to meet and surmount difficulties; not to fly from them, like cowards; and to fly, too, in vain, for they will meet and arrest us at every turn of our road…”

Virtue was not virtue as an end in itself – fortitude was not an intrinsic good, not intrinsically good – but good insofar as it was the means to an end. It the lack of fortitude did not lead to unpleasant consequences, there would be no virtue in fortitude.

 

[Portofino]

But final ends are what things are supposed to tend toward; that is simply what they are. If final causes do exist in nature, then I think there are moral obligations.

It’s difficult to prove an intrinsically obligatory nature in such final causes, without invoking the conditional “if.” If you want to flourish as a human being, do x and do not do y. That is tantamount to saying, “these natural laws exists for a purpose, such that they are beneficial to human beings when they are followed, and injurious to human beings when they are not.”

Healthy eating, exercise, even the forging of loving relationships, all pass that test. Indeed, there is general consensus that the medical profession is in the business of healing the body and promoting physical health, and most psychologists would agree that the forging of loving relationships is necessary to one’s flourishing as a human being, from early childhood onwards. Just the fact that loneliness and isolation are painful emotions is common sense evidence of this.

That’s a more common sense, more grounded notion of final causality, however (if final causality is how one chooses to view it). I don’t mean to harp on the same sex contact thing, but its violation of nature is precisely what is being insisted upon by proponents of the Aristotle/Aquinas conception of natural law, and that is precisely where an “ought” becomes a non sequitir, from a common sense perspective.

That is, it’s not enough to say, “you should do x and not y – even though y is do-able – because y is against nature’s law.” To ground it, to convert an “is to an ought” – or, in any case, to compel and to motivate behavior – one has to say, “if you want to flourish, do not do y, because y will impede your flourishing as a human being.” This is precisely what is argued, elsewhere, and this is precisely where consensus breaks down, because it is debatable that a minority of individuals engaging in, say, same sex conduct will interfere with human flourishing, on any level. In fact, as I’ve mentioned, one could argue that celibacy interferes with human flourishing, on the same grounds.

You can get most rational individuals, who are socialized to live amongst other people, to agree that there are oughts – based on the conditional of human flourishing – as regards self and one’s conduct towards others. But if one is speaking of a duty owed purely to nature, as it were, that’s where I think the “is/ought” problem reasserts itself. In fact, unlike with ecological arguments – “do not pollute the air, do not pollute the water, do not kill the wildlife” – one has not even demonstrated that same sex contact is doing harm – damage, injury – to the order of nature itself. That nature cares or is being hurt by this. So what is left – a principle? A principle of non-contradiction? A certain intellectual cleanliness? It sounds positively mathematical, this sense that a “square peg should not fit into a round hole because it’s simply illogical, a contradiction in terms.”

That neatness and tidiness, that intellectual cleanliness and non-contradiction of obeying natural law when there is no demonstrable harm to self, to others, nor to nature itself, is where I think the argument becomes abstract in a way that the “ought” becomes non-compelling. It is hard to read an obligation into something where the failure or breach of that obligation does not demonstrably produce a victim or an injured party.

There is plenty of argument that is does produce a victim – all the better, as a line of argument. And there is plenty of argument that it doesn’t. But to say that x is not the way that things are meant to be, not the way that things should be, without invoking consequences – either in this life, or in a posited next life – means that one is ultimately making an argument that is either accepted on its face, or not, but that is much weaker in terms of actually persuading or motivating behavior, on a pragmatic level. And human behavior, almost by definition, is a pragmatic affair.

 

[polytropos]

I don’t understand why there is asymmetry between good and bad (they are just different from each other). I define good as absence of evil as you define evil as absence of good.

I responded to this at the bottom of the post you quoted (although you did not quote this section):

As I mentioned in my last response to Portofino, “desirable” is not referring to the conscious desiring of human beings. It is referring to the (generally unconscious) intentionality (or end-directedness, or, to use the Aristotelian-Thomistic term, final causality) prevalent in nature. So when we say “desirable,” we aren’t referring to the way that a child desires a lollipop. A more paradigmatic example would be the way DNA desires to interact with certain enzymes to unwind, reproduce, repackage into chromosomes, etc. These are all unconscious processes. They do not necessitate a conscious desirer. So what it means to say that good is being as desirable is that the good is the fulfillment of final causes. It is good for a strand of DNA to do what it is directed toward inherently (and DNA is directed toward unwinding, replicating, and repackaging whether or not it actually does so - which is to say that DNA’s final cause is inherent in its form or formal cause).

So perhaps it is now clear why there is an asymmetry between good and evil (or badness, to use a more morally neutral term). Good is the fulfillment of final causes. Badness is the lack of fulfillment of final causes. There is not really a way to frame evil as a privation of good; would a privation view of good entail that things are good inasmuch as they fail to fail at what they are supposed to be? I don’t know.

The last part is meant to explicate why good and evil are asymmetrical. To clarify, we define good as the aspect of being as desirable, and the privation view of evil follows from that definition of good. (We don’t define evil as privation of good from the beginning.) The point of the OP was to clarify why it makes sense to define good as being as desirable (ie. why, when we call something good, we mean that its being is in a desirable way).

As such, simply defining good as the privation of evil would not be “the opposite.” To take the opposite view, you’d have to first define evil as convertible with being and show that it makes sense to do so, and then show that a privation view of good follows from that. I don’t think the latter part is what is problematic; if you assume that evil is convertible with being, then a privation view of good would probably follow. What I’m saying is that you could not establish a convertibility between being and evil, since evil involves things failing to be what they are supposed to be.

 

[polytropos]

This is very interesting. If even the apologists have no idea what the word could have meant 700 years ago, then on what grounds do they present this as an argument?

I said I did not know the nuances of the translation. I don’t know Latin. I did not say that I don’t know what “desirable” means.

Clear? It is merely a speculation. Obviously it is not your personal fault that you use an undefined word. It is the fault of the translators who did such a lousy job. The use of “desire” in this context is not simply nonsensical, it is positively misleading. Nevertheless, we can dispense with question.

Aquinas’s and Aristotle’s metaphysical views are pretty well-known, even by people who disagree with them. What I’ve argued is fairly consistent with them - that “desirable” refers to a closer instantiation of what a thing is supposed to be. This is a “lighter” claim than noting that the good is the fulfillment of final causes, which requires a defense of the doctrine of final causes which I’ve chosen not to get into here. Since people can misapprehend the good, this definition is meant to account for what they mean when they call something good.

If anyone shows that Aristotle and Aquinas’s view of the good entailed that all pleasurable or preferable things were good, then a substantial revision of the Western canon is in order. I’m not the one speculating here. I also have clarified what “desirable” means several times, starting in the OP, so I do not see what is misleading.

Now we are getting closer in mutual understanding. I have no problem with your analysis. Actually, this is exactly what I assert. “Good” is what promotes life, or makes it more enjoyable. “Bad” is what hinders life, or make it less enjoyable. As such “good” becomes a synonym for “useful” and “beneficial”. The opposite of “good” is “harmful”, which is synonymous with “bad”. There are zillions of “good” and “bad” events, all depending upon which “living entity” is under consideration.

Except we are not actually in agreement. I would agree that “good” and “bad” correspond to what promotes and harms life, but I am not saying that those are the meanings of “good” and “bad” in all contexts, or that such a usage is exhaustive. What I’ve argued for is an analogical understanding of the term “good,” in which it applies differently to different things but preserves the meaning that a greater instantiation of what a thing should be corresponds with its degree of goodness. (I’ve also argued that “what a thing should be,” whether it has some ontological basis or not, is at some level conceptual, so denying final causality does not undermine this definition of good.)

Good" is a relative term, based upon the “living entity” we refer to - as in “what is good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander”. So why are we arguing? We say the same thing. Good is relative, bad is also relative. The only unresolved question is the meaning of “evil”. I present the definition of “intentional causation of harm (or bad)”. Crystal clear, no ambiguity.

Again, we do not agree as much as you imply. While I agree that, for living things, it is generally good for life to be promoted and bad for life to be harmed, I do not view that as exhaustive or definitional. My view of good is more general, and entails a privation view of evil. A privation view of evil would entail that it is bad for a living thing to die, but not that badness is defined as a living thing dying.

A bad triangle, for instance, is not a dead triangle, but one that is drawn with shaky lines. That is because we don’t view a triangle as something that is supposed to be living (whereas a dead cat is a bad cat).

 

[polytropos]

Apart from the nonsensical usage of “formal and final causes” this exactly correct. "
…

It would help again if you translated this “final causality” into a meaningful term.

Also a definition of “final end” would be useful. Moreover, you use the term “supposed to”. That also presupposes a conscious observer, and a point of view. Is this “supposed to” as meaningless as the “desire”? Or is there a correct translation to it?

I’ve noticed your primary argumentative strategy is to call things nonsensical. Even though I am not really arguing for formal and final causes here, it is a little odd to assert that I have not defined the term at all. I have associated the term final causality on multiple occasion with end-directedness or intentionality. I have provided the DNA example twice, I think.

In any case, while Portofino and I had been talking about formal and final causes, they are not essential to the point I have been making, because for the sake of my definition of good and the privation of evil, it is sufficient to note that when we call something good, we are referring to what we think is good.

For instance, if I think cats are better with three legs, then I will call cats with three legs “good cats.” Someone else who thinks cats are better with four legs will call cats with four legs “good cats” (and will call cats with three legs “bad cats,” because cats with three legs lack what he thinks is desirable for cats, namely four-leggedness).

I am, again, not defending a full account of Aristotelian causality here, because the above point holds whether or not it is true. The account would essentially hold that there are four types of causes: formal causes, material causes, efficient causes, and final causes. Since these are held to be objective, they would solidify the term “what a thing is supposed to be.” I may think that it is good for cats to have three legs, but because the form of cat has four legs, a cat is better when it has four legs, even if I disagree. So I, as an observer, can be wrong about what is good for cats, but there is still some other measure of goodness (the instantiation of forms, the fulfillment of final causes).

In that respect, there would be (following from a full doctrine of causality) an objective, observer-independent standard of the good.