McLovin wrote: ↑Thu Feb 15, 2018 1:10 pm
No, you didnt tell me what is "good", nor what is "bad". In your previous message you mentioned the word "bad" only once, and used it to assert something, not to explain me what "bad" means.
When we're talking about good and bad in the context of discussion on morality, we're talking about moral good and moral bad, with respect to moral theory and fact.
Just as "up" and "down" mean certain things if we're talking about the stock market or physics.
Dealing with circumstances, we're talking about relative harm and benefit when comparing different outcomes (good being less harmful and more beneficial, bad being more harmful and less beneficial), when dealing with behavior we're looking at consequences in terms of the harms and benefits mentioned as outcomes of that behavior so likewise we can say some behavior is relatively good or bad compared to other behavior, and in terms of judgement we can look at behavior in the context of the person to assess good or bad character.
McLovin wrote: ↑Thu Feb 15, 2018 1:10 pmbut you didnt explain why should harm be reduced and why is harm "bad" (whatever that is supposed to mean), especially if there are not humans.
"Should" is also a moral should. If you are/want to be moral, you
should do certain things that comport with that.
We can also discuss mathematical "shoulds". If you are presented with the problem "2+2" you
should answer that it equals 4,
mathematically speaking. Do you disagree with that?
Now if there is no being (not necessarily human, any sufficiently rational being would suffice) to ponder and answer these questions (moral or mathematical) "should" isn't so meaningful.
We don't usually say that a tornado shouldn't smash houses, but we say that outcome is morally bad/harmful.
We wouldn't usually say that a die shouldn't roll 5 when we ask it what 2+2 is, but we would say that answer is mathematically incorrect.
The goodness or badness of things exists independently of thinking things, just as the correctness or incorrectness of mathematical formula, but we can't prescribe actions to chaos; we can only say it would be better or more correct if chaos happened to do X. Because dice have no mathematical intent or inclination and a tornado has no moral one, and in fact they have no interests or thoughtful inclinations at all, it would be silly to presuppose that they might or could have these interests so saying they "should" do anything doesn't make much sense.
Yes, we could say to the tornado "Hey tornado, IF you are a moral tornado, you should not smash that house", and we could say to the die "Hey die, IF you are a mathematically accurate die, you should answer 4 to the question 'what's 2+2'"... and that's correct. If they were those things, if they had moral agency or mathematical ability they should do those things (morally and mathematically respectively). It just sounds silly to say it because we know they are not.
This is different from a psychopath, for instance, who is capable of understanding these concepts and valuing morality/mathematics and obeying a moral or mathematical should. It's not entirely unreasonable to suspect that he or she may be a morally or mathematically interested and competent psychopath.
We also know the psychopath has a mind, so beyond that there may be a teleological argument to be made for binding force of morality. But that's another topic. (Binding force deals with the question "why should we be moral?" rather than "what should we do if we are to be moral?")