Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Leontiskos]

...If appropriately-equipped others can't perceive what you perceive when you do the experiment then it doesn't count...

I would say that in science we have a fairly good idea of what appropriately-equipped others look like, but we don't in morality. Or, robust moral theories spell out what an appropriately-equipped other looks like, and naive theories just assume that everyone is appropriately equipped.

(Just tossing this into the mix - I realize I'm late to the game)

[CIN]

I'm suggesting that if you were to hold the beliefs:

1) torture by the inquisition can be known to be morally wrong
2) the truth or otherwise of propositions about the afterlife cannot in this life be known
3) torture can be justified by good consequences

then your beliefs would be logically inconsistent and therefore one of them must be false.

With 3) being arguably the best candidate for being thrown overboard.

Thanks for the clarification.

I assume that when you say 'known', you mean 'known by most present-day humans'. If you mean anything else, then we're not in a position to know whether 1) and 2) are true or false, because we don't know what may be knowable by beings who do not fall into the class of most present-day humans.

Given this assumption:
1) is false, because most present-day humans are not capable of knowing all the consequences of an action.
2) is true.
3) is true.

[Leontiskos]

Again, you should probably ask me how necessary it is to my happiness that I do these things. As I'm probably the best judge, if I say I need to do them to be happy, you should probably let me get on with it.

Not disagreeing at all. Just seems to me that your conclusion is more consistent with a morality that values freedom/agency than with the pain-minimisation morality that I thought you were arguing for.

I think CIN makes the false assumption that subjective experiences of pain and pleasure can be quantitatively measured and summed, and since this assumption is false the theory itself is not coherent.

I think my theory may form part of that best theory. My theory explains why we think it's bad to torture (it's because torture causes pain, and pain is bad, and bad means 'merits a negative attitude', and pain does indeed merit such an attitude). It explains why we think murder is wrong (it's because pleasure is a good, meaning it merits a positive attitude, and murder is the deliberate ending of something that is good, and that must be a bad thing to do). Subjectivists are fond of pointing to the differences in moral opinions in history and around the world, but I think they may have overlooked the similarities. Most cultures disapprove of murder. Most cultures, I believe, disapprove of deliberate torture; at any rate they seem to very rarely practise it. Where do these ideas come from? Maybe they come from a widespread recognition that pleasant experience is good and unpleasant experience is bad.

The cultural consensus is that things like torture and murder are intrinsically evil, and your theory most certainly does not account for this fact. For example, when someone is murdered the judge's sentence is not going to turn on whether there were sufficient consequences for the murder.

Another crucial problem with your theory is that it is basically only fit for non-human animals, and describes their behavior. For rational beings like humans 'good' and 'bad' are not equivalent to 'pleasurable' and 'unpleasurable'. They are equivalent to 'desirable' and 'undesirable'. If we think that something ought to be done then we call it 'good'. If we think that something ought not be done we call it 'bad'. This often maps to pleasure and pain, since pleasure is desirable and pain is undesirable, but there are many cases where we decide that an intellectual good or evil outweighs a sensate good or evil. To give one example, desire for honor or glory is a desire for status or power, not for experience. Not every desire for status is merely a desire for an experience of status.

In <this post> when you spoke of "meriting a positive/negative attitude," you were much closer to the mark, but it seems that the abstract space you opened up was immediately collapsed back into pleasure and pain (or "pleasant and unpleasant experience").

[Good_Egg]

I'm suggesting that if you were to hold the beliefs:

1) torture by the inquisition can be known to be morally wrong
2) the truth or otherwise of propositions about the afterlife cannot in this life be known
3) torture can be justified by good consequences

then your beliefs would be logically inconsistent and therefore one of them must be false.

1) is false, because most present-day humans are not capable of knowing all the consequences of an action.
2) is true.
3) is true.

So your position is that
- the morality of an action is simply the sum of all the goodness and badness of all its consequences
but
- nobody can even know all the consequences of an action, let alone weigh up their goodness/badness

Leading you to the conclusion that we can never know whether any action is right or wrong ? So your answer to any question of morals or ethics is "nobody knows" ?

[Belindi]

I'm suggesting that if you were to hold the beliefs:

1) torture by the inquisition can be known to be morally wrong
2) the truth or otherwise of propositions about the afterlife cannot in this life be known
3) torture can be justified by good consequences

then your beliefs would be logically inconsistent and therefore one of them must be false.

1) is false, because most present-day humans are not capable of knowing all the consequences of an action.
2) is true.
3) is true.

So your position is that
- the morality of an action is simply the sum of all the goodness and badness of all its consequences
but
- nobody can even know all the consequences of an action, let alone weigh up their goodness/badness

Leading you to the conclusion that we can never know whether any action is right or wrong ? So your answer to any question of morals or ethics is "nobody knows" ?

Socrates himself claimed he did not know, so CIN is in good company. However CIN must decide or they will have no reason to get out of bed in the morning.

Evaluations are aimed at both short terms and long terms . This conversation is about not only long lasting but eternal values. That knowledge will never happen. God- believers believe that knowledge happened and may be learned from a special Book.

God-believers are wrong because religious theism is unsafely close to dictatorship. Jesus himself pointed out that it was God, not Jesus, who was Good. To be fair, Jesus referred to the Mosaic law (Ten Commandments) as good and sufficient, and so implied that he himself is not God.

Many honest men even in the present day look to the Ten Commandments so as not to betray others, despite that many honest men may not be aware that the main seminal historical basis of their ethics is the Ten Commandments and Mosaic law.

Socrates was not averse to the law of Athens despite what his accusers claimed. Same with Jesus. Both Jesus and Socrates added to the law so as to make the individual responsible for his own intentions towards others. It's tough, but that's life.

[Good_Egg]

I would say that in science we have a fairly good idea of what appropriately-equipped others look like, but we don't in morality. Or, robust moral theories spell out what an appropriately-equipped other looks like, and naive theories just assume that everyone is appropriately equipped.

(Just tossing this into the mix - I realize I'm late to the game)

Welcome to the game...

I would suggest that the science of mental health is less well-developed than the science of physical health. But while a mental health professional wouldn't necessarily use the word "psychopath", they would acknowledge the reality of a small minority of people with no sense of right and wrong.

[Belindi]

I would say that in science we have a fairly good idea of what appropriately-equipped others look like, but we don't in morality. Or, robust moral theories spell out what an appropriately-equipped other looks like, and naive theories just assume that everyone is appropriately equipped.

(Just tossing this into the mix - I realize I'm late to the game)

Welcome to the game...

I would suggest that the science of mental health is less well-developed than the science of physical health. But while a mental health professional wouldn't necessarily use the word "psychopath", they would acknowledge the reality of a small minority of people with no sense of right and wrong.

But moral judgement is not appropriate to mental health professionals. These professionals are bound by the same ethics as physical health professionals: preserve the life and relieve pain.

The sense of right and wrong is partly a biological developmental process and partly a nurturing process. The mental health professional in an ideal world would provide the circumstances for a child to grow up to full moral maturity. In cases of actual brain lesions causing deficient moral growth the mental health professional can and does whenever possible use medical materials to right the balance.

[Gertie]

My approach is that philosophy ought to think about morality in the appropriate terms. The starting place is how do we derive Oughts from the inter-subjectively falsifiable facts of the world we call 'objective.' Those facts are generally established inter-subjectively through observation and measurement. I point and say there's a red apple over there. Everybody else who looks agrees. We also agree that apples always fall downwards, according to specific, lawlike equationss which can be checked, and we agree gravity exists. Conscious experience isn't observable and measurable in that way,

Gravity isn't observable, only its effects. It's the same with conscious experience. The effect of your conscious experience is to make you say things like 'that apple is red', and when I look at the apple I see that it looks like what I call 'red', and the fact that you also say it's red leads me to the reasonable inference that you have essentially the same conscious experience when you look at the apple as I do. There's no reason to doubt the objective reality of our conscious experience; it's part of the universe just as gravity is. And while we can't measure conscious experiences with the same accuracy that we can measure gravity, we can at least tell from a person's behaviour and testimony whether one pain is greater than another, which leads to the reasonable inference that pleasant and unpleasant experiences vary in intensity of pleasantness and unpleasantness. That's a very rough kind of 'measurement', and good enough for our purposes in ethics.

and neither are the concepts of right and wrong.

The concepts themselves aren't, but we can certainly measure rightness and wrongness, at least in a relative sense. If I drop a bomb that murders two people, my action is twice as wrong as if it murdered one person. If it murders a thousand, it's a thousand times as wrong.

And deriving an ought from an is isn't observable or measurable or falsifiable in that way either. It's simply not the appropriate way to think about morality.

So you say, but what about my theory? In a nutshell, I hold that 'bad' means 'merits a negative attitude', that unpleasant experience merits a negative attitude, and that we ought not to cause what is bad. You could falsify this in one of three ways: by showing that 'bad' has a different meaning, or no meaning at all; that unpleasant experience merits a positive attitude or does not merit any particular attitude (here I think you would have to consider evidence from the way animals behave in relation to unpleasant experiences such as pain); or by arguing that in fact there is no obligation not to do what is bad (though why you would argue this, except out of a desperate desire to save ethical subjectivism by any means whatever, I really don't know).

You might be able to come up with some form of words where morality can be defined as objective, but morality is still all about the nature of being an experiencing Subject.

Of course, but my theory covers that. The subjectivity is entirely in the experiences; none of it is in correct moral judgments about those experiences.

About meaning, mattering, value, purpose, needs and desires, feelings, flourishing and suffering.

All of those are relevant to morality, but if your analysis only takes you as far as a disparate set of unrelated features, then I would suggest that it's not going as deep as it could. Take flourishing and suffering, for instance; you speak of them as if they were opposites, like good and bad, but they aren't: the opposite of flourishing is not suffering but withering, and the opposite of suffering is not flourishing but enjoying. The fact that you have not arrived at a pair that are opposites, like good and bad or right and wrong, suggests that either flourishing or suffering is not basic. I would suggest that while suffering is basic and can't be analysed further, flourishing is not; we can ask 'why is it a good thing to flourish?', and the obvious answer is 'because it leads, or can lead, to more enjoyment'. But if we ask 'why is it a bad thing to suffer?', I think the only sensible answer is 'if you've suffered, you don't need to ask the question.'

But as I said, that doesn't make morality just a matter of subjective opinion either. Rather it means we need to give the existence of subjective experience its proper due when thinking about morality. In terms of interests in the state of affairs. That's the reason it matters how we treat each other. Hence Oughts.

Agreed.

wellbeing doesn't boil down to only pain-pleasure.

True, but I don't think you've given any reason to think that wellbeing is intrinsically good.

So what line of argument gets a moral foundation based on subjective experience to be considered objective, in that you can point it out and every reasonable person will agree, like when I point to an apple every observer will agree there's an apple?

Every reasonable person agrees that the theory of evolution is true. That's not like pointing to an apple, it's a case of considering the evidence and looking for the explanation that accounts for it best. That's how I see a theory of morality getting accepted.

And why not just say this is the appropriate way to think about morality, rather than try to force it into the apple box?

Because at the end of the day, you can't wish away the distinction between an objective truth about how the world is and a merely subjective idea of how it is; that's a real distinction, and we're entitled to ask, with putative moral truths, whether they are the former or the latter.

You can even ask a self-proclaimed moral subjectivist if they act as if being kind is good and being cruel bad in their own lives, and unless they're a sociopath they'll probably try to live their lives according to the foundation you and I roughly agree on. Again re other humans at least.

Very true, and it's part of the evidence that suggests that subjectivism is mistaken.

As I said, wellbeing and suffering can manifest in lots of different ways, aside from pain-pleasure. Often overall wellbeing depends on some suffering. Wellbeing can mean different things for different people, at different times (and differ radically for different species).

I think I have dealt in a reply to someone else with your point that wellbeing and suffering are broader than pain and pleasure. I dealt with it by replacing the terms 'pain' and 'pleasure' with 'unpleasant experience' and 'pleasant experience'. If you mean anything more than that, then I think the extra is instrumentally good or bad, not intrinsically good or bad.

This means individual freedom has to be a moral consideration too. It's right for people to pursue their own harmless goals and desires, just as it's right for people to play a role in the common good. And sometimes the two will conflict which creates a moral dilemma.

I think freedom is ethically neutral. Any goodness or badness it possesses is the result of the goodness or badness of whatever it is instrumental towards. It certainly isn't an intrinsic good. People in the USA are free to own guns, and look what that leads to - every year, 30,000 Americans killed unnnecessarily by their fellow Americans. The freedom to take hard drugs does nobody any good. And would you like everyone to be free to drive on whichever side of the road they like?

CIN


Rather than go through point by point, I'll try to summarise what I see as our key areas of disagreement. Tho I think we're basically on the same page, and I also appreciate you've tried to think this through to come up with something which makes sense, is on point, and potentially useful.


Subjective vs Objective.

This doesn't rank high on my list of concerns and I don't think there's an obvious answer. In fact I believe it's not the appropriate way to think about morality, rather we should treat it on its own unique terms. It's unique in respect of deriving Oughts from the state of affairs.

We have a way of treating facts as objectively true which is rooted, imo, in more than a logical and coherent form of words such as a propositional statement. It is rooted in what we treat as real and true about the world. And our methodology for categorising ''objective'' facts and truths about the world is inter-subjective (all knowledge is ultimately experiential) third party falsifiability, via observation and measurement. The scientific method, and associated reasoning from third person observation and measurement.

Morality isn't accessible to third person falsification via observation and measurement. That's just the nature of the beast we're trying to wrangle here. Morality doesn't fit that basis for objective. And you're not relying on some godly objective source either. If you have a different way which can at least in principle, establish morality is objective, then you need to lay that out, with your definitions and resoning, as the basis for your claim.


So my position is morality isn't objective in the way I think of what is required to treat it as objective, but neither is it just a matter of subjective opinion. It's in its own category, the category of deriving Oughts from objective facts about the world.


And Oughts are appropriately justified by the qualiative nature of conscious experience entailing having an interest in the state of affairs, in the facts of how the world is. We sentient beings have a quality of life which means it matters what happens to us, we have a stake in the state of affairs.

That's it.


Pleasure vs Wellbeing


I think Harris is on the right track talking about wellbeing, comparing it to health, and talking about a moral landscape of hills and troughs. Goldstein who makes the mattering aspect of morality explicit also talks about a mattering map. These are imo appropriately broad and inclusive ways of thinking about having a stake in the state of affairs. It reflects the highly complex and individualistic nature of humans, and the broad spectrum of interests of various species.

Think about the nature of conscious experience, its richness and complexity. It comprises various subsystems inter-twined via billions of patterns of neural interactions, making each individual unique. All this is manifested in a unified field of consciousness, a discrete, unified self. Our reward systems which manifest as pleasure-discomfort are mingled in with everything else, patterns all interacting and affecting each other. And overall result in a sense of wellbeing idiosyncratic to each unique individual, but experienced as unified package. So for example some people choose to run a marathon, suffering hours of physical discomfort, because it gives them a sense of achievement. I wouldn't do it, but I get it. Medicine can taste awful, but I take it, surgery is worse, but it can bring a richer quality of life. I like chocolate, but I don't eat it for every meal.


It might be possible to reduce the whole, inter-twined world of experience to to a pleasure spectrum for the purposes of morality, and I get why you pick that aspect of experience. But subjects come in such complex, inter-twined packages it's practically impossible, and more-over might not capture the complex but unified nature of what being a subject is and associated holistic interests in what happens to us. So Wellbeing seems a better fit to me.

[Leontiskos]

I would suggest that the science of mental health is less well-developed than the science of physical health. But while a mental health professional wouldn't necessarily use the word "psychopath", they would acknowledge the reality of a small minority of people with no sense of right and wrong.

But moral judgement is not appropriate to mental health professionals. These professionals are bound by the same ethics as physical health professionals...

That's right. The other issue is that to compare a psychopath to a non-scientist breaks the analogy. Rather, we should not trust people who are uninterested in morality and do not study morality in any way, just as we should not trust people who are uninterested in science and do not study science in any way. That is, we should not trust the first group of people in moral matters and we should not trust the second group of people in scientific matters.

God-believers are wrong because religious theism is unsafely close to dictatorship.

This is a straightforward logical fallacy. "You are wrong because your worldview is unsafely close to dictatorship."

[Belindi]

I would suggest that the science of mental health is less well-developed than the science of physical health. But while a mental health professional wouldn't necessarily use the word "psychopath", they would acknowledge the reality of a small minority of people with no sense of right and wrong.

But moral judgement is not appropriate to mental health professionals. These professionals are bound by the same ethics as physical health professionals...

That's right. The other issue is that to compare a psychopath to a non-scientist breaks the analogy. Rather, we should not trust people who are uninterested in morality and do not study morality in any way, just as we should not trust people who are uninterested in science and do not study science in any way. That is, we should not trust the first group of people in moral matters and we should not trust the second group of people in scientific matters.

God-believers are wrong because religious theism is unsafely close to dictatorship.

This is a straightforward logical fallacy. "You are wrong because your worldview is unsafely close to dictatorship."

The quotation in full is "God- believers believe that knowledge happened and may be learned from a special Book.

God-believers are wrong because religious theism is unsafely close to dictatorship. "

What I had in mind but expressed badly is that any dogmatic acceptance of a moral code from any source including The Bible might help to enthrone a fanatical dictator. The only safe way to be guided by The Bible or any moral code is to interpret it from the perspective of kindness and whether or not the consequences of a moral choice are kind or unkind.

[Leontiskos]

This is a straightforward logical fallacy. "You are wrong because your worldview is unsafely close to dictatorship."

What I had in mind but expressed badly is that any dogmatic acceptance of a moral code from any source including The Bible might help to enthrone a fanatical dictator. The only safe way to be guided by The Bible or any moral code is to interpret it from the perspective of kindness and whether or not the consequences of a moral choice are kind or unkind.

Do you listen to Sam Harris? I recently heard him say something similar.

Your new formulation isn't logically invalid because you have omitted your conclusion that believers are wrong.

1. Any dogmatic acceptance of a moral code from any source including The Bible might help to enthrone a fanatical dictator.
2. Therefore, dogmatists are wrong.

I take it we agree that (2) does not follow from (1)? The original formulation was something like a slippery slope fallacy.

[CIN]

I think CIN makes the false assumption that subjective experiences of pain and pleasure can be quantitatively measured and summed, and since this assumption is false the theory itself is not coherent.

No, I'm only assuming that pleasantness and unpleasantness vary quantitatively (in intensity and duration). I am not making the further assumption that these quantities can be measured by anyone.

I think my theory may form part of that best theory. My theory explains why we think it's bad to torture (it's because torture causes pain, and pain is bad, and bad means 'merits a negative attitude', and pain does indeed merit such an attitude). It explains why we think murder is wrong (it's because pleasure is a good, meaning it merits a positive attitude, and murder is the deliberate ending of something that is good, and that must be a bad thing to do). Subjectivists are fond of pointing to the differences in moral opinions in history and around the world, but I think they may have overlooked the similarities. Most cultures disapprove of murder. Most cultures, I believe, disapprove of deliberate torture; at any rate they seem to very rarely practise it. Where do these ideas come from? Maybe they come from a widespread recognition that pleasant experience is good and unpleasant experience is bad.

The cultural consensus is that things like torture and murder are intrinsically evil, and your theory most certainly does not account for this fact. For example, when someone is murdered the judge's sentence is not going to turn on whether there were sufficient consequences for the murder.

I haven't claimed that my theory does account for this. I've only claimed that it may explain why most societies disapprove of murder and torture. Disapproving of something is not the same as believing that it is intrinsically evil. I disapprove of people getting blind drunk every night of the week, but I don't think getting blind drunk is intrinsically evil, I just think it's a stupid thing to do because it could lead to a lot of other problems.

I think the view that murder and torture are intrinsically evil arises from the near-impossibility of tracing the long-term effects of an action. The immediate consequences of actions are very easy to see, whereas the longer term consequences are nearly always hidden, and people are unaware of them. This gives people the impression that only the immediate consequences matter, which hardens into the mistaken belief that actions whose immediate consequences are intrinsically bad are themselves intrinsically bad.

Another crucial problem with your theory is that it is basically only fit for non-human animals, and describes their behavior. For rational beings like humans 'good' and 'bad' are not equivalent to 'pleasurable' and 'unpleasurable'.

I don't hold that 'good' is equivalent to 'pleasurable'. I hold that 'good' means 'merits a positive attitude', and that one thing (for all I know there may be others, though at present I'm unconvinced of that) that intrinsically merits a positive attitude is pleasantness of experience. Other things (such as health) may often directly or indirectly give rise to pleasant experiences, and to that extent may also merit a positive attitude, and thus also may justifiably be called 'good'.

They are equivalent to 'desirable' and 'undesirable'.

I don't think 'good' can be equivalent to 'desirable'. Is a good woman the same thing as a desirable woman?

If we think that something ought to be done then we call it 'good'.

Even if that is true, it can't give us the meaning of 'good', because we use 'good' of many things that are not actions.

This often maps to pleasure and pain, since pleasure is desirable and pain is undesirable, but there are many cases where we decide that an intellectual good or evil outweighs a sensate good or evil. To give one example, desire for honor or glory is a desire for status or power, not for experience. Not every desire for status is merely a desire for an experience of status.

You are now muddying your own thesis by confusing what is desirable with what is desired. But as I've indicated, I don't think 'good' is to be analysed in terms of desirability - or, for that matter, desire.

In <this post> when you spoke of "meriting a positive/negative attitude," you were much closer to the mark, but it seems that the abstract space you opened up was immediately collapsed back into pleasure and pain (or "pleasant and unpleasant experience").

I'm claiming that pleasantness and unpleasantness respectively merit positive and negative attitudes. I don't see any collapse here; I'm not substituting pleasantness and unpleasantness for what merits positive and negative attitudes, I'm saying that those are the things that merit those attitudes.

[Leontiskos]

I think CIN makes the false assumption that subjective experiences of pain and pleasure can be quantitatively measured and summed, and since this assumption is false the theory itself is not coherent.

No, I'm only assuming that pleasantness and unpleasantness vary quantitatively (in intensity and duration). I am not making the further assumption that these quantities can be measured by anyone.

If they cannot be measured then no normative utilitarian theory is possible, correct?

The cultural consensus is that things like torture and murder are intrinsically evil, and your theory most certainly does not account for this fact. For example, when someone is murdered the judge's sentence is not going to turn on whether there were sufficient consequences for the murder.

I haven't claimed that my theory does account for this. I've only claimed that it may explain why most societies disapprove of murder and torture. Disapproving of something is not the same as believing that it is intrinsically evil. I disapprove of people getting blind drunk every night of the week, but I don't think getting blind drunk is intrinsically evil, I just think it's a stupid thing to do because it could lead to a lot of other problems.

Okay, fair enough. My point is that there are many moral theories which not only account for societal disapproval of those acts, but which also account for the societal judgment that they are always impermissible. It strikes me as odd to boast about your theory's explanatory power when most of the other theories have more explanatory power.

I think the view that murder and torture are intrinsically evil arises from the near-impossibility of tracing the long-term effects of an action. The immediate consequences of actions are very easy to see, whereas the longer term consequences are nearly always hidden, and people are unaware of them. This gives people the impression that only the immediate consequences matter, which hardens into the mistaken belief that actions whose immediate consequences are intrinsically bad are themselves intrinsically bad.

Wouldn't you agree that deontological moral systems are historically more robust than this?

Another crucial problem with your theory is that it is basically only fit for non-human animals, and describes their behavior. For rational beings like humans 'good' and 'bad' are not equivalent to 'pleasurable' and 'unpleasurable'.

I don't hold that 'good' is equivalent to 'pleasurable'. I hold that 'good' means 'merits a positive attitude', and that one thing (for all I know there may be others, though at present I'm unconvinced of that) that intrinsically merits a positive attitude is pleasantness of experience.

But this is why I said that your definition of "meriting a positive/negative attitude" immediately collapses back into pleasant and unpleasant experience. If you are not convinced that anything merits a positive/negative attitude except by virtue of pleasure/pain, then it would be more accurate to say that you believe 'good' and 'bad' are equivalent to 'pleasurable' and 'unpleasurable'.

They are equivalent to 'desirable' and 'undesirable'.

I don't think 'good' can be equivalent to 'desirable'. Is a good woman the same thing as a desirable woman?

Yes, a good woman is a desirable woman. We are using 'desire' in the philosophical sense, not the sexual sense.

To quote Aquinas, "good is that which all things seek after." That is to say that if something is sought then the seeker is perceiving it as good, and if someone believes something to be good then they also believe it to be desirable or worth seeking.

If we think that something ought to be done then we call it 'good'.

Even if that is true, it can't give us the meaning of 'good', because we use 'good' of many things that are not actions.

In this thread we are talking about morality, the realm of actions. Good in that sense has to do with what ought to be done. A good act is a desirable act, something which we think ought be done.

This often maps to pleasure and pain, since pleasure is desirable and pain is undesirable, but there are many cases where we decide that an intellectual good or evil outweighs a sensate good or evil. To give one example, desire for honor or glory is a desire for status or power, not for experience. Not every desire for status is merely a desire for an experience of status.

You are now muddying your own thesis by confusing what is desirable with what is desired.

No, not unless there are things that are desired but not desirable, and there are not. The way I am defining good collects the various subjective and objective meanings of that concept, but the root begins in the subjective valuation of the agent. As soon as and as far as an agent desires something, they hold it to be good. Your suggestion that I can desire something and take it to be undesirable involves a contradiction.

In <this post> when you spoke of "meriting a positive/negative attitude," you were much closer to the mark, but it seems that the abstract space you opened up was immediately collapsed back into pleasure and pain (or "pleasant and unpleasant experience").

I'm claiming that pleasantness and unpleasantness respectively merit positive and negative attitudes. I don't see any collapse here; I'm not substituting pleasantness and unpleasantness for what merits positive and negative attitudes, I'm saying that those are the things that merit those attitudes.

You're erecting a vacuous genus, because you don't believe that anything merits a positive attitude except in virtue of pleasure. Occam's Razor would shear away the bit about meriting attitudes, which adds nothing to your theory that good is associated with pleasure and bad is associated with pain.

[Belindi]

This is a straightforward logical fallacy. "You are wrong because your worldview is unsafely close to dictatorship."

What I had in mind but expressed badly is that any dogmatic acceptance of a moral code from any source including The Bible might help to enthrone a fanatical dictator. The only safe way to be guided by The Bible or any moral code is to interpret it from the perspective of kindness and whether or not the consequences of a moral choice are kind or unkind.

Do you listen to Sam Harris? I recently heard him say something similar.

Your new formulation isn't logically invalid because you have omitted your conclusion that believers are wrong.

1. Any dogmatic acceptance of a moral code from any source including The Bible might help to enthrone a fanatical dictator.
2. Therefore, dogmatists are wrong.

I take it we agree that (2) does not follow from (1)? The original formulation was something like a slippery slope fallacy.

Moral evil is culturally defined and can't ever be eternally defined. Fair to say the present almost world -wide culture defines evil as unkindness to individuals for the sake of an ideology. Apart from supernatural revelation we will never have an everlasting definition of evil and must rely on Axial Age moral codes.

(2) follows from (1) if wrong is defined as unkindness. You are good at classical logic so why not restate including the above additional premise?

PS I don't listen to Sam Harris (I did once) because I dislike videos and prefer text.

[Pattern-chaser]

I'm suggesting that if you were to hold the beliefs:

1) torture by the inquisition can be known to be morally wrong
2) the truth or otherwise of propositions about the afterlife cannot in this life be known
3) torture can be justified by good consequences

then your beliefs would be logically inconsistent and therefore one of them must be false.

With 3) being arguably the best candidate for being thrown overboard.

Thanks for the clarification.

I assume that when you say 'known', you mean 'known by most present-day humans'. If you mean anything else, then we're not in a position to know whether 1) and 2) are true or false, because we don't know what may be knowable by beings who do not fall into the class of most present-day humans.

Given this assumption:
1) is false, because most present-day humans are not capable of knowing all the consequences of an action.
2) is true.
3) is true.

So one or both of you asserts that the end justifies the means. This is moving away from "eternal moral truths", but OK. For me, I find that sometimes, the end justifies the means. But, in other circumstances, I find myself believing that the end does not and cannot justify the means. I have no fixed and definite conclusion on that one, and perhaps that's the correct attitude?