Michael Ragland wrote:

> 
> MR:
> I know what good is Phil. It's not emotionally and/or physically or
> sexually hurting yourself or others. At least that is my definition. I'm
> quite well aware there have been people and organizations and even
> countries-states which have tried to rationalize their evil by
> projecting and scapegoating and presenting their ideology as what is
> "good" for the world. I don't confuse my definition of what
is "good"
> with the latter. 
> 

Arnhart maintains "The good is the desireable".  I think that's
a trifle myopic.  It applies to my occasional desire for mocha
ice cream, I suppose.  But too much mocha ice cream would
most definitely not be good.  So there is a good that overrides
or contradicts the good that is desireable in mocha ice cream.
This is prudential good.  This too is desireable.  I don't
know if its more desireable, but I certainly suspect it is
a more rational good, in that it is one based on far more
comprehensive considerations than my quest of the immediate
good in mocha ice cream.  And, indeed, I assume it is the
capacity to suspend all the momentary "goods" to achieve what
is in one's overall "good" that is the primary reason nature
has favored rationality in the first place.  For example,
agriculture is heavily dependent on a farmer's capacity
to suspend the momentary "good" of not having to bust his
buns all day in the hot sun in order to reap the distant
"good" of having food on the table during those long cold
winter months.  This prudential good has been formalized
in the guise of 'the equal weight criterion', and idealization
of what is presumed to underly prudential "good":

    My feelings a year hence should be just as important to me as
    my feelings next minute, if only I could make an equally sure
    forecast of them.  Indeed this equal and impartial concern for
    all parts of one's conscious life is perhaps the most prominent
    element in the common notion of the _rational_.  (Henry
    Sidgwick, 'The Methods of Ethics').

    All these theories [of rational self-interest] also claim that,
    in deciding what would be best for someone, we should give equal
    weight to all the parts of this person's future.  Later events
    may be less predictable; and a predictable event should count
    for less if it is less likely to happen.  But it should not
    count for less merely because, if it happens, it will happen
    later (Derek Parfit, 'Reasons and Persons').


But even this prudential good, as rational as it may be, is
not the good that ethical philosopher's fret about.  I assume
this good is the one many think is captured in 'The Golden
Rule', "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you".
Personally, I have never really liked 'The Golden Rule', in
that I don't believe it captures the essence of ethical
'good'.  Its just too easy to read it as advocating ethical
'good' because it will be prudentially 'good' for you - that
you do good to others because in the end you will be better
off.  If that were the case, then there would be no need to
draw a distinction between prudential "good" and ethical
"good".

A far better exemplar of the "good" that lies at the core of
ethics is, I believe, represented in the moral maxim, "Love
your neighbor as you love yourself".  That's because it doesn't
entail an appeal to self-interest, or prudence.  It appeals
to pure objectivity as the essence of good, in this case
valuative objectivity.  Of course, once you get to this type
of good, you are in for a pretty tough slog trying to understand
why any person in their right mind would find this maxim in
the least bit appealing.   The explanation I have long favored
is that we find a certain resonance in this moral maxim as
the result of an implicit theory of rationality we all share
in which 'being rational' is simply a matter of 'being objective'.
And the pay off is not a physical payoff, a material good, but
rather AN EMOTIONAL PAYOFF.  Loving others as we love ourselves
somehow feels like something a rational entity should do and
makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and in spite of the
fact that this is an ideal non of us can ever hope to live
up too, and more importantly, in spite of the fact that it
is THE OPPOSITE of what mother nature has found to be most
expedient in perpetuating DNA, at least to the extent we
have modeled this blind mechanical process correctly in
our formal representations (e.g., Maynard Smith's ESS,
the Price/Hamilton's kin calculus, etc.).


PR
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