Re: Bart: My response.....

Subject:

Comments:
: : Bart, : : I thought I posted this already but it isn't on th e board so....I apologize for the harshness--ignore it-- of some of comments in the following--some of it is jusdtifued some isn't. I was having a hectic day the day I wrote it: : None of it's justified. : : Anyways: : : > > I was VERY specific. Mine is a precise definition; it is absolutely clear, if you have the right information, all of which has a definite true/false value, whether something is good or bad. I would venture that your definition is a LOT more ambiguous than mine is. Of course, that view may change if you can give me clear, definite definitions of "positive" and "healthy". : : ---Bart, you weren't specific at all.Your wording was such that your meanings were made extremely obscure or ambiguous. If we held a poll here asking which post prvided a clearee more concise defintion I would win. Here is your post again: : I do not deny that yours is clearer and more concise. Everyone, including myself, would agree with it, because you defined the word in terms of it synonyms. However, yours is absolutely useless, and it does not resolve the ambiguity concerning what is good and what is bad. Mine is clear, after you take the time to figure it out, and it is fairly concise. Very little beats "good is beneficial and positive" for conciseness, but the extra length is well worth it to have an actual, working definition instead of a thesaurus entry. : : -------In the first place, there is good and there is bad. If and only if something is good for a particular person, then given the choice, that person would choose to have that thing over not having it. The reverse is true for something that is bad. : : : .....Extremely ambiguoys and obscure, Bart. You haven't defined good and bad here--you instead have provided them in such a way as to imply they speak for themslevses(you refer to the first place and speak of good and bad as if they were universals---hmmmmm...like the alpha and the omega. all You haven't DEGFINED "good" and "bad" here--all you have done is say WHAT aperson's REACTION is to something he finds good(he'd choose it) or bad(he wouldn't choose it). : I am saying that the reason he is labeling something good is that he would choose to have it over not having it. Aside from that, I am not ambiguous at all. There is no ambiguity in my definition. Given the information of whether or not a person would choose something over not choosing it, there is no way to be confused about whether or not that thing is good from the perspective of that person, and given the information of whether a person considers something to be good or bad, there is no ambiguity over whether or not that person would choose to have it over not having it, if they had the choice. : : Not a defintion, Kimo : So what would you call it, if it's not a definition? And please, spare me the derogatory terms. Whether or not you think it's right, what category would you put it in? In other words, I'm asking you to ignore that you think that the car is rusted, and just tell me that it's a car. : : ---let's examine the rest:. : : ------When Frank says that something is good for Fred, this is not necessarily a good for Frank. It is neither, however, necessarily a good for Fred. Frank says this because Frank thinks that the thing would result for Fred in what Frank considers good for himself. : : !!!???Read that statement again! It's a paradox! Your beginning staement contradicts your last one! You say that when Frank says something is good for fred it doesn't mean the same is good for frank. But then you say that Frank says the good that is good for fred is such becasue Frank thinks that good is good for himself! Which is it!? Nvermind it doesn't matter---good is not determined by what a person says. : Oh, shut up with the wiseass comments. It is not yet mutually established whether good is subjective or objective, so everything we have to say on the topic matters. : If Frank considers something good for Fred, then he means that IF he were in Fred's position, he WOULD consider the thing good for himself (himself in Fred's position). Get what I'm saying now? : : -----There is also the problem of a person considering what they are doing as bad, but doing it anyway. In this case, although the person would say that what they are doing is bad, they unconsciously consider it to be g : : There exists a separation between the person's ideological worldview and the person's practical worldview. The ideological worldview is the one speaking, and if it were separated from the practical worldview, it would indeed choose to have what it considers good over not having it. : : Bart, spare me! What view they are viewing from is irrelavent--good is good, bad is bad and it's not open to subjective interpretaiton by different views. And you are making the huge mistake of mixing ideas here. The "bad" you refer to in the example is an example of "moral" bad while the "good" you refer to refers to pleasure. : No, the "good" could be moral good, and the "bad" could be pain. People do not always make choices to further their own happiness; sometimes they make choices based on their deepseated convictions. : : Huge differences. You can't mix like that. : That's the beauty of my definition - I CAN mix like that, and it still works perfectly. Most definitions would crack if you used them that way. : : The feeling that he has that what he is doing(say doing drugs) is bad comes from a moral sense. Ethically, it can't be good at all. : What if he is committing honorable seppukku with the drugs as the suicide weapon? Drug use can be ethically good. : : The feeling that he ahs that is good refers to a physical, pleasurable sense. it can't be bad becasue it czAsues no pain. Two different worlds. Just becasue something is ghood in a pleasuarble physical sense deosn't make it good in a moral sense. The reason some things that FEEL good are judged as MORALLY bad is becasue despite their pleasurable efects they casue more damge in the long run. If they didn't then they wouldn't be considered bad in the fiirst plce! : Right! I'm glad you are getting the picture! : : ------ : : -------Now to put it in terms of Maverick's example, which was a mentally deranged person who wants to be released. Maverick said that being released would be bad for society. That is covered amply by my first definition. Maverick also said that being released would be bad for the deranged person, and this is what made me think. What Maverick was saying was, being released would result in pain and problems for the deranged person, which Maverick considers to be bad, but which for the person do not outweigh the benefits of freedom. : : ------I explained the eroneousness of that thinking in my post concerning individuals and society. If the person beleieves that nothing outweighs the benefits of freedom then heis welcome to go free--but he can get the hell out of society where his freedom is not good OVERALL.--- : I agree completely. Or, I could put it another way: you haven't successfully disagreed with me. : : I shouldn';t have to give you defintions of postive and healty--they speak for themselves. : That's the problem. "Good" speaks for itself, too; everyone takes for granted that "good" is what they, personally, mean by "good". : : The fact that you ocnsistently need defintions of every word or groups of words I use : We are definining a word. We don't want to run into circularity after just a few cycles here. It is therefore wise to make sure you have a firm understanding of what you mean by every word you put into the definition. : : indicates you ahve as erious probelem with understanding language context(no I am nnot kidding). : Nonetheless, you should be. If I weren't so tired, I'd laugh out loud. : : Just becasue words are similar dosn't mean they mean the same xact thing. As I satted in my previous psot different words have different meanings in particualr contexts. If they didn't we wouldn't have so many words. If good meant the same exact thing as postive for isntance we wouldn't have one or the other. I've said it over an dover--to the point of getting resally tired of it--that there are UNIVERSAL interpretations of defintions. : If you are getting tired of repeating yourself, why don't you do something different for a change? For example, agree with me? I've been having to repeat myself almost as much as you have. : The idea of universal definitions makes absolutely no sense. Language changes over time. People speak different dialects and languages. : : If you can't figure out what I mean by "positve" or "healty" then you do quite frankly have serious problems(that's not an insult, just aplain fact). : If you think you can insult people and get away with it by denying that you did and saying that it's obvious that they are what you called them, you quite frankly have serious problems (that's an insult AND a plain fact). : : If thwere WEREN"T universal defintions/meanings/interpretations then we COULD NOT have words for "good" and "bad" becasue for the words to exist then the COCEPTS have to exist. If you cannot understand this very important--and very fundamental point--then we may as well ditch the discussion becasue evrything esle will be superfluously said without that understanding. : : I gave a damn good example of how words with similar meanings don't necessarily have exact same meanings when I utilized the examples of good, beneficial, and desirous in my last post. Go back and read it again and you will understand what I mean by healthy and positive. You KNOW what I mean when I say healthy and postive--I think you are just being facetious out of spite. : Believe it or not, I really, sincerely request that you define "healthy". People use that word in many different ways. For example, if you were in China, the closest word for "health" would be usually synonymous with the state of being able to control your energy (which is highly questionable). If you asked a Western doctor, he would probably tell you that health is the absence of affliction or illness (which is circular, because affliction or illness is the absence of health). If you asked some shaman in Africa, he might tell you that health is the freedom from demons (which is a little friggin weird, and makes no sense from a scientific viewpoint). Personally, I think that defining health is a lot harder than defining "good". I could use the word "good", and say that health is the state of having a good body and mind, but then I can't use health to define "good" (since I already used "good" to define health, it would be a circular definition). : : > : : >-------- There isn't anything outside of your own subjective view in this universe, or in any possible one, that is possible to know of. Anything anyone comes up with, by definition, is their own subjective view. If your definition is the correct one, then it is logically impossible to supply conditions for it. I hope that you are incorrect, because if you ARE correct, we can't use the terms "good" or "bad" at all because we have no way of labeling anything "good" or "bad". : : : : Hardly. I told you before, Bart, that you were making the msitake of separating yourself from the universe. Bizarely, you accused me of doing that in your resposne. here again you display the truth, which favors me: WE ARE A PART IOF OBJECTIVE REALITY__A PART OF THE UNIVERSE. When it comes to thinggs like "good" and "bad" thre are universals becasue we are a part of the universe and those concepts originate in us.The exact opposite of what you just said is true: if good and bad wer'tuniversals then we wouldn't have any DISTINCTION between what is good and bad. : Why not? If each person has his own personal idea of what is good and what is bad, then each person has a distinction, albeit a different one for each person, between what is good and what is bad. : : If "good" and "bad" wern't universal then we wouldn't have such a universal reaction to things like murder being "bad" and things like joy being"good". : That reflects how similar our psychologies are. But it isn't universal. Puritans would have a problem with joy being good, and a really demented serial killer would have a problem with murder being bad. : : > > , : : >------- "Positive" is the nearest synonym with "good" that I know of, even more of a synonym than "beneficial". I will therefore discard this part of your definition. If you choose to explain it, I will be happy to include it again. : : As I stated above in the opener, I just explained the importance of different meanings in similar words. Won't do it again in the same post. : You say that there are different meanings, but you don't say what they are. Since you aren't saying, I discard the "positive" part of your definition. : : : : : : >--------- Define "health". : : : I shouldn't have to define health for you Bart--if you don't know what the I mean you need to do some serious language review. : Just as I suspected. You really don't know what health means, not in a way that you can put into words. : : I didn't have to use healthy in my definition--I did howver to make my defintion more specificand was inspired to use it becasue of my mental patient example. Again your reductionist nature can grate on one's nerves becasue of its inheent irrationality. : I deny that I am a reductionist, and I deny that I am irrational, and although I have the manners to refrain from labeling you with a neat term like that, I would say that whatever you are has a good deal of irrationality in it. : : "healthy" doesn't necessarilyhave a damn thing to do with how long one survives--healthy is primarily defined by quuality not qunatity. : "Quality". There we go again. Still damn close to "good," although it IS a step in the right direction (away from "good"). Do you mean quality as in usefulness, or do you mean it as in happiness? Or something else? : : Rememebr we are reffering to snetient beings--a healthy body--as in your example--is irrelavent without the conscious. aware mind functioning. Good healh primaruily reltes to the mind--many physically superb Humans aren't healthy becasue they have dangerous mindsets. Many physically impaired indivudauls are extremely healthy where it counts--in the mind(steven Hawking for example). : How about OVERALL health? How do you distinguish, for example, between someone with an IQ of 133 who is very mentally stable but has hemophilia, and someone with an IQ of 132 who is just a little less mentally stable but is in good health? Who is less healthy? What is the OVERALL measure of health? Evolutionary hardiness? (in that case, sterility equals death, health-wise) : : In fact healthiness of the mind often dictes healthiness of the body. Cnacer victims who beleiv theya re going to die usually dp. Thos ethat fight and believe otherwise often live)LANCE aRMSTRONG). : No disagreement here. : : --------Is it the state in which a person is the most powerful? In that case, would you say that if all of humankind were given supernatural powers with the proviso that they will be in excruciating pain their whole lives is a good one? : : Again refer to my quality v. quantity statements. If they have both the powers and pain but the pain is theuir fiocus, they are not healthy--if vice-versa then they are healthy. : : : : > : : >------ My definition works perfectly for this. From your perspective, hospitalization is a good thing for Mr. Jones, but from his perspective, it isn't. : : No Bart--go back and read my postr againALL of it. Iam getting tired of you taking things out of context or ignoring key points. You apprently didn't understand my example at all. The whole point was that Mr. Jones FALSELY believd that his highs were a good thing--this belief was a delusion directly casued by the illnes. : And my whole point was that from his perspective, they WERE a good thing, and they were only bad from the standpoint of other people around him who cared about what they thought was best for him. I have good reading comprehension, and there is no way you can convince me otherwise. : hmm. I just noticed something. I have almost never addressed you by "Maverick," but you often address me by my name. I am getting the impression that you are using "Bart" paternalizingly. If that is the case, please stop. : : In other words, if he lacked the illnes--something that he wasn't SUPPOSED to have--he wouldn't believe as he did. AT THE END OF THE MOVIE HE FINALLY REALIZES THIS AND REALIZES THAT TREATMENT--WHETHER HOSPITAL CARE OR DRUGS--IS WHAT IS GOOD FOR HIM. : So at the end, treatment IS good for him. At the beginning, it wasn't. If his illness makes him think in a certain way, it is still him thinking in that certain way. Remember what you consider the self to be? If that self is diseased, and there is a problem in the soul, the self is still the self - it's just a diseased self. : : Read that gain carefully--I won't repa\eat it again. : O.K., I read it again carefully, and I picked up on something else. Thanks for the tip. Are you a 1 by any chance? "...'supposed' to have"? : : ---------That is an amazingly stupid definition. : : Really. Then apparently you didn't understand it. Let me rephrase it, utilizing the encarta encyc.: : : In other words, moral choices are only valid if they are choices that everyone should hold to at all times. In Kant's view the categorical imperative was an injunction, to be obeyed as a moral duty, regardless of an individual's impulses, to produce a humanitarian society based on reason and thus created by free will. : : Read that again carefully. It means that moral choices--determing what is good and bad--only make sense if they are applied consistently by everyone. Otherwise, there is no piont to even having words like good and bad becasue evryone can hypothetically decide whatever they damn well please. That means that murder, rape, and mayhem could be considered good, while altruism and self-sacrifice considerd bad. Hmmmmmm. : If everyone practiced murder, why wouldn't the world be a better place? : : : ------- Let's say I am considering riding a bicycle. Should I refrain from doing so because if everyone had to ride bicycles all the time, the world economy would collapse and everyone would starve to death? : : That makes no sense. There's nothing wrong with riding a bicycle. And if you are going to put case-specific conditionals on the universal law – for instance, riding a bike is only imperative if doing so would not cause pain to anyone or make people die younger because of it – then it is no longer a “universal law”. You might as well kill people, with the justification that the universal law that resulted from your actions would say that only people only need to kill people if they happen to be you, and they happen to be in your situation exactly, and they happen to want to. That wouldn’t cause much of a deterioration of society – only a few people dead, no matter how much of a serial killer you decide to be, is not going to hurt the human race as a whole much. : : : ----Yhat's a pretyy screwed up interprwetation of the defintion, Bart--you totally n\misunderstood the entire meaning go back to my new phrasing of it--it should enlighten you. : O.K., here's where you need to do some explaining. Why do you think it should enlighten me? You are forgetting that your way of viewing reality is very little like my way of viewing reality. Always be explicit when dealing with me. That's what I've done when dealing with you. : My point was, it only works if you put conditionals on the "universal" laws, and then it matters how many. I suppose the bicycle riding was a bit of a stretch of the term "moral," but it's irrelevant to my point. Do you think that killing Hitler would have been morally good? If so, you probably justified it by saying that it's all right to kill people if you save more people by doing so. However, if you apply it universally, even with that condition, it would be fine to kill everyone. Some of each person's descendants would, in all likelihood, kill someone, even if only by the indirect means of overpopulation, so you would be saving people by killing everyone. : : > : Persoanlly I believe good in moral conduct can be summed up in that old classic, the GOLden RUle:do unto others as you'd have done to you, or don't do to other what you wouldn't want done to you. : : > Right. So if you're an anesthesiologist, how the hell would you do your job? Or even better, what if you specialize in chemotherapy? : : -------What the hell are you ranting about!? Make sense,man, make sense! How the hell does the golden rule complicate things for the individuals you just cited? Those two idiividuals--as DOCTORS for crying out loud--exemplify the Golden RUle. The patient is suffering and wants treatment and the doctr provides it--something he undoubtedly would want done to him. Sheez! : Oh? The anesthesiologist would want to be knocked unconscious for the duration of the surgery? The chemotherapist would want to inject the same poisons into his body that he injected into the cancer patient's body? Like most moral laws, the golden rule only makes sense if you add conditionals. : : > : To summarize, "good" in any particualr situation is that which has the most positive, healthy, benefical effect in the long run. : : > All three of those terms are undefined. That's the most important thing for you, if you are sticking with your old definition - define "healthy" or "positive". You can ignore my other objections if you can define "healthy" in such a way that, given a set of conditions, it is possible to definitely say that something is healthy or unhealthy or neither. : : ------I defined them above as much as I need to--if you need any more help I suggest you delve into some language courses for an intensive workout. : I'm interested in how YOU are using them. : : > : : ----The chief difference between our definition is, you are trying to explain what YOU mean when you say “good,” and I am trying to explain what ANYONE means when they say “good”. : : -------LOL!Sheez Bart you have it backwards yet again! I am the one that has been arguing for a UNIVERSAL defintion while YOU have been arguing the subjective. Get with it, man! I am telling you that there is a universal defintion of good and bad that applies to anyone and any sitution. You keep saying that the defintion is the choice of the individual. C'mon! : Your "universal" definition is what YOU consider good. Prove me wrong, and I'd lie prostrate at your feet if they weren't hundreds of miles away. Highlight some part of your universal definition of the word good that you do NOT consider to be good. : And your universal definition is NOT what EVERYONE considers good. As you demonstrated with the mental patients, some people consider things to be good that are in conflict with your universal definition.

Optional Link URL:
Link Title:
Optional Image URL: