Hi everyone,
I've sent out the invites to class members to sign up. Feel free to pass along news items, tentative speculations about ethical issues, clear-cut cases of injustice and/or righteousness . . . it's all good.
What is good, anyway? discuss.
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A good might be something you could want for everybody, including yourself. Likewise, it would be an action that would be "univeralizable", without "negative" repercussions.
Anybody want to define negative in this context for me?
In that context, a negative would be a want for oneself. Selfishness, basically. But then again, society is what has determined what is good and what is negative.
It depends on one's interests and personal priorities. Let's say a married couple that lives in Kansas moves to New York City because the husband was promoted. It is considered good news for the husband. However, his wife is going to have a troubling time leaving her good job, friends, and basically her life. Someone can say the husband is being unfair because he is making his wife leave her life behind, but someone else can view the wife as being selfish if he were to let go of the opportunity he was given. It all depends on the perspective. Maybe that example was too complicated.
All in all, I strongly feel that the action/being of "good" depends on the initial intentions.
"A good" is selfish. It's supposed to be because in the end it is whatever one's opinion of something is. It can be generalized, what we individually think is good can come from some social norm of what is perceived to be good, but in the end the only thing that is going to encompass all that is good is all that is good for one's self. That is not necessarily 'bad' for everyone else. I can't see why selfishness and morality have to oppose one another. I think that morality comes from selfishness. That is, what we perceive to be best for ourselves, for our survival, tends to be what is moral. Acting in a moral way is for our own good because these ideas are usually followed by all society, in that way we have some order to our world. We can predict more readily how others will act and act accordingly. In this way we have the 'not harming' each other principle put into laws to be enforced and rules of morality (not enforced) which do the same. Of course I have digressed from the term 'good', but my point is that good is selfish, and that's good.
Good CA be selfish. Good outcomes for oneself is most people's concerns, sure. Chapter two (The Good) discusses all different factors that apply to it. Section 2.2 discusses well-being. What I got out of it was that some people believe better outcomes depend on how many people it benefits, and some believe on how MUCH it benefits certain people. Quantity vs. Quality.
I believe saying that good is selfish just means that one weighs them self more when determining the good of outcomes.
*CAN
On that note, good can be entirely unselfish as well and there’s a term for it: altruism. Webster's Online Dictionary defines altruism as “1. Unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others. 2. Behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species.”
While humans aren’t exactly true altruists (such as worker/female ants that dedicate their whole lives helping the queen raise her larvae, yet remaining sterile themselves), there are cases where people have shown altruistic characteristics; e.g. a volunteer medic in Iraq (who’s actually a very well paid doctor back home) that helps not only the injured American soldier and shot civilian whilst in the middle of battle but also the dying insurgent that injured the American and shot the civilian.
Another example would be a person in extremely high standing in society that takes a troubled inner city youth under their tutelage that hasn’t fully realized their potential.
Or a blogger that randomly “drops” knowledge on a class they don’t go to in order for others to learn/grow/progress.
Of course some might argue that in all 3 cases that the medic, the highly accomplished person and the blogger are hoping to achieve some sort of fulfillment in life; i.e. they “gain” happiness for the fact that they did something to help someone.
But in my opinion that’s a completely arbitrary argument.
The fact is, they chose to help someone at their own expense when they didn’t have to. Therefore, while some goods might be selfish, it’s also more than possible for other goods to be unselfish.
You make very good points, but what you see as "arbitrary" I see as my case.The point is that the beneficial acts towards others, even at one's expense, are beneficial to the self. And perhaps the expense is outweighed by the good that one get's for one's self, in whatever form that 'good' might come.
There is no selfishness or unselfishness, Tania. Everything you know, in the words of Plato/Socrates, is just shadows inside a Cave. Everyone (well mostly everyone) you know is shackled in chains inside that Cave. The brave souls that do dare to venture outside, like your esteemed professor, come back into the darkness of the Cave and stumble, and then decide to teach or do something that contributes to humans.
What helps you come out of the darkness, you ask? It's something (HINT: or someone) called LOVE, which binds us all together like gravity, Karma, etc.
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