Good is good and bad is bad (yes morality is really that easy)

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
21

Is the act of killing treating the other as self in the context?

22

Good and bad are objectively true things, as applied to specific beings for whom good and bad is applicable. Eating a cupcake is good, a nail in your eye is bad. There is an objective, universal difference between those two experiences.

Yes morality is useful for social necessity. Why do you think that is? Because morality derives from and reflects TRUTH. And truth, i.e. reality, is quite useful for the task of establishing social necessities.

23

The first is a laughable example. Why not just say something like “eating enough but not too much at least relatively healthy food is good”? I shall give you the benefit of the doubt that that is rather what you mean. (Of course, eating relatively unhealthy yet tasty food can also be good, for mental health and thereby also for physical health, so consider that to be included in what I said before.)

As for the second, a nail in the eye may be good to a masochist, but that’s kind of an extreme exception. And as a rule, it’s an adequate example of the negative counterpart to what I just said. So both the said good and the said bad appear to point to the good of staying alive and (relatively) well, and the corresponding bad. But what’s good about being alive and, er, let’s say kicking?..

24

You can copy and paste, but you are not making yourself understood.

25

Some killing follows the golden rule. It is good. Some killing doesn’t follow the golden rule, and it gets called things like murder. It is bad.

26

WHo says the “golden rule” is good?

27

Do you agree with the law of identity (A=A)?

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28

Gotta Serve Somebody

Song by

Bob Dylan

You may be an ambassador to England or France
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world
You might be a socialite with a long string of pearls

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

Might be a rock ‘n’ roll addict prancing on the stage
You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage
You may be a businessman or some high-degree thief
They may call you doctor or they may call you chief

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes, you are
You’re gonna have to serve somebody (serve somebody)
Well, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody (serve somebody)

You may be a state trooper, you might be a young Turk
You may be the head of some big TV network
You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or lame
You may be livin’ in another country under another name

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes, you arre
You’re gonna have to serve somebody (serve somebody)
Well, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody (serve somebody)

You may be a construction worker workin’ on a home
Might be livin’ in a mansion, you might live in a dome
You may own guns and you may even own tanks
You may be somebody’s landlord, you may even own banks

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody (serve somebody)
Yes, you’re gonna have to serve somebody (serve somebody)
Well, it may be the Devil or it might be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody (serve somebody)

You may be a preacher preaching spiritual pride
Maybe a city councilman takin’ bribes on the side
May be working in a barbershop, you may know how to cut hair
You may be somebody’s mistress, maybe somebody’s heir

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
Yes, you’re gonna have to serve somebody (serve somebody)
Well, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody (serve somebody)

Might like to wear cotton, might like to wear silk
Might like to drink whiskey, might like to drink milk
Might like to eat caviar, you might like to eat bread
May be sleeping on the floor, sleepin’ in a king-size bed

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody (serve somebody)
Yes indeed, you’re gonna have to serve somebody (serve somebody)
Well, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

You may call me Terry, you may call me Timmy
You may call me Bobby, you may call me Zimmy
You may call me RJ, you may call me Ray
You may call me anything, no matter what you say

You’re still gonna have to serve somebody (serve somebody)
Yes, you’re gonna have to serve somebody (serve somebody)
Well, it may be the Devil and it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

(Ooh yeah)
(Serve somebody)

29

As for me and myself, I choose the Lord.

30

To serve is a dishonor, because service is done for a reward. If the reward increases, the scoundrel will serve more, and vice versa.

31

There’s no dishonour in serving ideals like truth, unity, beauty and goodness. If someone personifies them and calls it God or the Lord, there is no dishonour in that either.

32

Yes there is. It’s an inauthentic delusion unless the one who embodies it actually exists.

33

You are getting into dangerous terrain here.

There is always a clear tendency in your posts: Every opening must be closed unless it is one that you accept. I am reminded of a saying of Jesus:

Matthew 23:13 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let in those who wish to enter.

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34

Demand actuality of the kingdom, or you, yourself, embody those words.

Embrace the danger, 808.

35

In any process of service, there is dishonor. People serve for a wage, and they easily betray those they served if offered greater rewards. Every servant is a traitor by their very nature. Finally, serving God, beauty, truth, or goodness is impossible. After all, none of these ever hired anyone for service. So don’t try to lie – it’s laughable.

36

I suppose you judge everybody by your own behaviour. I have had no problem understanding my job in nursing as service, even if I was paid for it. Payment was secondary to many of us in that job, and as long as we were managing, we valued the team spirit more than the pay.

37

The example is to illustrate the obvious difference between pleasure and suffering. Eating a cupcake is a nice experience. A nail being shoved into your eye is not a nice experience. Anyone can understand immediately and clearly the OBJECTIVE difference between these two experiences. One involved pleasure, the other involves suffering. Categorically different. Good and bad involve not only conditions of existence such as needing to eat to survive, but also involve motivational feelings and reward-mechanisms including pleasure and suffering. Subjective experience is also an objective fact and arises from objective facts.

Causing suffering and torture is bad. Maybe in some cases it leads to good results, but that is deflecting from the real issue of the act itself.

Only sociopaths or libtards cannot grasp the intrinsic badness of inflicting torture on someone. To everyone else, who has a healthy and properly functioning mentality, suffering is understood as obviously bad. And I don’t mean small discomforts or the aches and pains of working out to get stronger. I mean genuine suffering. Like if someone tied you down and put a nail right into your eye while you were helpless. No one reasonably argues that would be good as an experience.

Experiences can have objective truth-value. This does not mean experiences are not already conditioned to the beings for whom such value-judgments can even apply to begin with. Rocks don’t have bad days, humans do. THAT too is an objective fact.

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38

To some. Not everyone likes cupcakes. But sure, it’s just an example.

Well, are pleasure and suffering really all that different? May there not be a very thin line between the two? Still, I agree that there’s indeed a line between them.

Yes, that’s kind of what I meant by that parenthesis about mental health. Mental well-being, motivation, etc.

No, this is nonsense and doesn’t follow from the aforesaid. Causing suffering to another need not cause suffering to oneself and may even give pleasure to oneself.

That’s at best intersubjective, not objective. Is sociopathy bad, mentally unhealthy, or dysfunctional? Not objectively. It’s funny that you are kind of the “libtard” here, asserting things like this. Also, like your “categorical difference” between pleasure and suffering, it’s quite superficial.

39

Pleasures & pains are neutral.

What makes them good or bad is whether the act intending them treats the other as self.

You mentioned cupcakes. Someone may enjoy the taste while feeling guilty that they are on their twelfth cupcake. They may want to treat their husband the way they would want to be treated if they were him… which… because he is human… means not eating 12 cupcakes.

40

The act intending pleasures and pains is what makes them good or bad? :sweat_smile: So it’s not the agent who intends to cause pleasure or pain, but the act itself? So the agent is always blameless or doesn’t even exist? (I’d actually agree with the latter, of course.)

As for “intentions”:

“In short, we believe that the intention is merely a sign and symptom that still requires interpretation—moreover, a sign that means too much and therefore, taken by itself alone, almost nothing. We believe that morality in the traditional sense, the morality of intentions, was a prejudice, precipitate and perhaps provisional—something on the order of astrology and alchemy—but in any case something that must be overcome.” (Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism 32, translation Zimmern.)

And yes, I do think HumAnIze means what you mean, probably. After all, you could accidentally shove a fingernail in someone’s eye when you’re trying to stuff a cupcake in their mouth. (What’s with the American obsession with cupcakes, anyway?) And he’s basically saying self = other, otherwise he wouldn’t proscribe cruelty as sociopathic or “libtarded”… (Seriously, don’t get me started about Americans. An American conservative, as opposed to a Christian conservative, seeks to conserve a liberal democracy that’s less than 250 years old! And as for Christian conservatives: “[T]o a virtuous Roman of the old stamp every Christian who ‘considered first of all his own salvation’ appeared—evil.” (Nietzsche, Dawn of Day, aphorism 9.))