O_H, I have a side question: Why does he talk about managers and bureaucrats so much? Is he essentially talking about consequentialism there? i.e. we can’t predict the outcome of our actions?
“Beneficent” means “doing good things” (as “magnificent” means “doing great things”, same Latin roots). You could also say “If you want to increase well-being, you ought to be good”: the “well” of “well-being” is the adverbial form of “good”. Synonyms and alternative etymologies keep one at the base level of being good to be good.
An alternative option could be “if you want to be charitable/kind/helpful, you ought to be morally good” - but this is clearly putting the cart before the horse, the phrase makes far more sense reversed.
KInd of circular, isn’t it? And lacking in specificity.
From another thread:
But what if you want a healthy forest? In that case wouldn’t you have done exactly the wrong thing?
There is no removing of judgments from contexts. Do you want a garden or a forest? What do others want? How far does this “others” category extend? What is best for “the earth”? What is best for my mother? What is best for the universe? What is best for me? Can we decontextualize ourselves in order to answer these questions?
Sorry not morally evaluative. And maybe in that context at all. If we take good in the context of a watch to mean it keeps time, then a watch that keeps time is good. Simple as that. With that definition, saying this is a good watch is the same as saying this watch keeps time so you’re just restating the is.
I don’t want to derail the thread too much, and I could do with a refresher read, but I think it is a) their promotion of efficiency without any consideration of value, and b) the lack of tradition/standards to which they as a class subject themselves and their peers. Having been one, such criticism makes perfect sense
I suppose it could be, but the example isn’t just a restatement as such. It’s a reason. You’re saying it’s good because it keeps time. The two aren’t necessarily synonymous as it can be good for other reasons.
Yeah, you and anon are probably right about this. This is an interesting formulation of the is-ought problem, by the way. I’ve never seen it put in those particular terms.
If we define good as I did, then a good watch keeping time is like a bachelor being an unmarried male. They’re totally synonymous, and necessarily so if we hold that definition. There’s some analytic shit going on here. My use of good here doesn’t say anything other than that the watch works.
If you define good as that which is determined to be good via some moral deliberation, then my statement about he watch would be silly.
That’s what I’m saying. That’s too narrow a definition of “good” in any case. That it keeps time is a reason it’s good; not the one and only possible reason for it, or anything else, to be good.
Well that’s why I said the watch example sucks. Now I wanna go on a whole long thing about how to describe things according to their functional roles such that we can make determinations about them absent of considerations outside the object. A watch has a goal. You’re not getting what I’m saying. How can a watch be good if it doesn’t keep time unless you use a definition other than the one I’ve used? Don’t thing of “good” as being important here. Think about how its objectively true that watches that keep time are what you want and those that don’t you don’t. I don’t have to derive anything to determine a watch is good. Working as being good is a criteria, not a reason.
But with an example as simple as a watch, it all reduces to what you want. You want a watch and you want a watch that works say the same thing. A watch that doesn’t work isn’t really a watch - it’s only potentially a watch. If I want a bookmark, and a watch is the only thing handy to do the job - then what I have is a relatively good bookmark. If I knew nothing of better designs for bookmarks, and saw no problems with what I’ve chosen to use as a bookmark, I might not even use the qualifier “relatively”. I might just think that’s what those things are for. Just as I might, now, think that a watch is for telling time. Is a watch for telling time? Would that make it wrong of me to use it as a bookmark?
Call it a derivation if you like, but you’re totally missing my point here. Not all derivations are from an is to an ought. It sucks having to use the word “good”, because you can’t detach it, for some reason, from the kind of moral evaluation I’m saying you can’t make based on an “is” description. The problems of moral evaluations are not the same as the problem of determining if something is functioning as it is intended to.
Please tell me you get what I’m saying here. Someone, actually a lot of people have told me in the past that to deal in good philosophy, you have to accept a degree of haziness. I think that’s because I’m not about to write a whole book about how moral inferences are different from determining if a watch works and calling it good when it does.
You’re mixing up “evaluation” with “determination of a criteria”. We don’t have to say it’s good when it works if that’s too equivocate-ish. Just say, “this watch works, so I’m happy with it because I want a watch that works”, and understand that it’s not the same as saying, “the world is like this, and therefore it should be like this instead”.
No, I don’t think pain compels. Many people choose not to take pain killers, for instance. That choice (either way) isn’t determined by the pain itself.
No, I’m not totally sure what you’re saying. You seem to just be saying it’s a bad example, but you’re having trouble telling me why. There are criteria that make things good, so determining that criteria is prudent and can lead to an evaluation.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but your point seems to be that a good watch is nothing like a good deed. The OP seems to be saying the two are good for similar reasons—they are effective and beneficial.
