Reply #5: whew. okay, let's give it a spin.

[gottaB]

NB: I thought you said you *were* a philosopher, and began crafting my reply with that in mind. :D Anyway, I'm not a philospher either, but in imho you are eminently capable of arguing these points, so I won't bother rewriting it.

a. Why radical scepticism? Because I have the sense of it being applied to all concepts indiscriminately, as if the first response to any question about a concept ought to be disbelief. Take a look at Bertrand Russel's definition of scepticism:

The scepticism that I advocate amounts only to this: (1) that when the experts are agreed, the opposite opinion cannot be held to be certain; (2) that when they are not agreed, no opinion can be regarded as certain by a non-expert; and (3) that when they all hold that no sufficient grounds for a positive opinion exist, the ordinary man would do well to suspend his judgment.

If Russel's scepticism can be said to represent a kind of regular old scepticism, then I would say that your scepticism is radical. Would you agree that philosphers have systematically made inquiries into the nature of the good? May we regard their opinions as expert opinions on the good? If we can agree on that much, then perhaps we might also agree that the experts are not agreed, in which case the regular old sceptic would be wise to regard opinions on the nature of the good as uncertain.

Of course, if it can be ascertained that "no evidence exists for the absolute good," then I would say that your scepticism would be a case of regular old scepticism. But I see two sets of problems wrapped in that: What evidence exists for the good? What evidence exists for the absolute nature of the good? I'm not sure that the same sort of evidence or investigative procedure can be applied to the two problems. I should think it rather depends upon what we are able to learn about the good, what it's nature is. But I may be quite mistaken.

b. I claimed that the good can be arrived at through inductive reasoning. It's absoluteness or lack thereof may be another matter. I shall attempt to illustrate. I have in my mind a vague sense that some things are good, but I'm not sure how to define it. It may be that what I think of good actually represents several different things, or a panoply of disparate phenomena. With those doubts in mind, I make some (imaginary) observations.

1. An old woman is attempting to coax her cat down from a large oak tree. A boy walks by, notices the predicament, and volunteers to climb the tree and retrieve the cat. He does so.
   
   
2. A young woman is given $100 as a Christmas present. On her way to the shopping mall, she sees homeless families struggling to keep warm. She uses her Christmas money to buy a coat which she donates to a charity organization.
   
   
3. A tobacco smoker is aware that his smoking poses a health risk to him and his family. His doctor tells him that his lungs are in bad shape. The smoker gives it some serious thought, and decides to quit.
   
   
4. A general has threatened to use nuclear weapons against an enemy. A third party informs the general of the known effects of nuclear radiation. The general withdraws his threat.
   
   

Now it would be easier if in each instance the protagonist explicitly claimed to be doing good. It shouldn't be necessary though. If we can provisionally agree that all four acts are for the good, then we have a basis for analyzing what we mean.

Is self-sacrifice a common element? Not necessarily, because the first case is not much of a sacrifice. It's been my observation that young boys enjoy climbing trees, and there could perhaps be an element of grandstanding at play. If that were true, would it still be for the good? Sure, if the cat were returned to its owner.

Is altruism a common element? Not necessarily, because the third case may be motivated by a concern for self-preservation, which only incidentally has a benefit for others. We may also wonder about the difference between altruism and pity, empathy and sympathy, and the like. We could introduce facts that would place the generosity of the girl in #2 in doubt, or rather the genuineness of the emotional motivation, because there should be no doubt that giving is in itself a generous act.

It's tempting to generalize here and say that giving is good, but it is not quite so simple. We must allow for cases in which giving is at best amoral. We must consider the possibility that giving should be understood within the context of systems of reciprocity, which may themsleves be for the good, or not. Acts of vengence also occur in the context of such systems, and it is much more difficult to say that vengance is for the good. Additionally, any particular instance of giving may have good and evil aspects. Would it be a good thing to give the former smoker a cigarette? That rather depends upon a lot of unknowables, I should think. Given all that, is it a reasonable generalization to view giving as good? I think so, but here we would appear to be at odds with the notion of an absolute good. We shall see.

Example 4, finally, is meant to illustrate that goodness need not signify a total absence of malice. The general may yet decide to completely annihilate his enemy. However, he is made to realize that doing so by means of nuclear devices would have harmful consequences for many, many others. His willingness to temper his sabre rattling and calibrate the use of force is good.

We can view all these examples as manifestations of the good, or, agreeing that the outcomes are for the good, we may yet attribute the judgement of "goodness" to the observer, and maintain that the four protagonists had no intention of doing "good" or anything like it. That's another kettle of fish. If you are willing to stipulate, however, that these are indeed instances of good being done, then we can move the question of how one dileneates essential properties without subscribing to a notion of the aboslute, one that would presumably be an a priori.

So what essential qualities are evident here? Self-sacrifice? Not quite. Giving? Not exactly. Empathy? Concern for others? Partially, perhaps. We might say that it's good to act in such a way as to (a) please others, or (b) ameliorate the suffering of others, or (c) minimize the harm to others that would be likely to result from one's actions. Now with (c) in particular, some would see that as confirming the notion that the good cannot be an absolute, but must rather be determined situationally. I think that reflects a limited understanding of absoluteness. We could tackle that on an empirical level, for instance by examining the range of possibilities for goodness that lie between nuclear apocalypse and world peace. I think we might find that launching projectiles that cause massive death and destruction tend not to be good, and we could make statistical inferences here, though there are certainly arguments to be made for the goodness of particular bombardments, horrific as that may seem. In any case, I think the problem is rather one of philosophical approach, so I'd like to turn to that. (And I note that we have only scratched the surface of goodness here, and that many other attributes of the good might become apparent were we to fully investigate.)

Is it good to be aware of a situation? Is situational awareness a good thing? Can it be cultivated? I would say yes to these things because I have it in mind that it's of the nature of the good that it cannot be intended towards without also intending that one's actions minimize the harm done to others who share the space in which acts take shape, are carried out, and acquire meaning. (And by the same token, we might say that knowledge of one's self is a good thing, and that ignorance is evil. Willful ignorance especially so.)

Let's try to be direct. If the good is not an absolute in the sense that it applies equally to all situations, in what sense is it or could it be absolute? If the good is a kind of idea, for example an idea people have of what they intend the consequences of their actions to be, in moral terms, then its absoluteness might be a matter of the status, constitution or genesis of ideas. Do ideas develop from experience, or are they as it were preformed, the stuff of pure consciousness? I think there is evidence that both mental faculties and the lessons of experience are entailed in the process of forming ideas. We can inculcate ideas into young people, but we can't incultate ideas into potatoes. It seems obvious that an idea must necessarily have a thinking subject. It is not clear though what role experience plays in the formation of ideas. There are thousands of languages on Earth. Is there a universal grammar, as Chomsky hypothesizes? Are there other language universals? We know at least there seems to be an innate human capacity for language learning and grammatical categorization. Why *do* we speak different languages then? And if language is solely the product of history, why are there acknowledged patterns that might be considered to be universal? Are they simply vestigal? Why haven't any natural languages been invented that would transcend these? Or are there forms of mental construction that cannot be discarded because they are intrinsic to human consciousness?

But moral ideas may be entirely unlike "pure" ideations, because the intention of the dogooder may be less towards an ideal than towards other people in particular circumstances. (I happen to think language presents the same kind of problem, but at this crude stage of conceptualization, we can let that go.) And yet it does not seem inappropriate to treat them as ideas, in as much as they inform the conduct of conscious actors, and may be subject to deliberation like other ideas. Concrete examples. Is there a universal notion that life is good and that killing is bad? We could say yes, and then note the exceptions to the rule and chalk it up to either hypocrisy or fallibility. Or we could strive towards a more nuanced understanding of the prohibition against killing in various cultures. Even in warrior cultures where the killing of enemies is celebrated, excessive killing tends to be frowned upon. We see that there are classes of people (or animals) that should not be killed or that one should think well of not killing, such as friends, family, kin, totems, brethren, soulmates, priests, women, children, what have you. The particular classes vary, but the notion that some classes of people should not be harmed is universal--In fact, where it is absent, I would say that one is dealing with a pathological case, and not a culture, analogous to the distinction between a psychopathic killer and say a hitman who presumably has the ability to distinguish right from wrong. And again, even among warriors, the killing of enemies is frequently regarded as the least desirable course of action, and some will say that it is best to achieve victory without killing. This speaks to a universal sense of what is good, that it's good to let others live.

Is that a moral abosolute? No, but the idea of the good may yet be absolute, though the judgement of what is good varies depending upon the circumstances of its actualization. Turn it around. Is the idea of the good relative? Totally? I think if that were so, it should have occured to some group of warriors to completely destroy every last human being on the planet. Because war is the ultimate truth, and its good to kill, or some such. There have been ample opportunities for mass murder, and even the most heinous examples in recorded history have been limited in scope and duration. If I were seeking to generalize, I would have to say that the morality of killing has tended more towards restraint than towards abandon. Thus the argument that a moral absolute is like a pregnancy--and there is of course a tremendous dispute embedded in that example--in that it must be all or nothing strikes me as a bit of distortion. There appear to be limits to the elasticity of moral configurations.

Finally, while I am neither a biologist nor a psychologist, I feel strongly that these are two very different modes of inquiry, and object to the reduction of psychology to biology. The development of the psyche does indeed appear to have a trajectory and a logic that is quite distinct from what one normally considers under the rubric of ontogeny.