From: Peter Voss (peter@optimal.org)
Date: Wed Dec 14 2005 - 08:26:14 MST
People use 'good' and 'bad' in fundamentally different ways - to mean:
a) Good in itself (an invalid concept as far as I'm concerned - 'good' is
basically an adjective, not noun)
b) good to achieve a specified goal, seen as desirable by a specified
entity.
See 'Good and Bad' in http://www.optimal.org/peter/rational_ethics.htm
This also covers 'what morality is about'.
Peter Voss
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-sl4@sl4.org [mailto:owner-sl4@sl4.org]On Behalf Of Jef Allbright
....
The key question I was trying to put forth in this discussion is
whether we could all agree that for any agent, that which promotes the
agent's goals would necessarily be seen as good from the point of view
of that agent. I think this is an important first step to
understanding what "morality" is really about, and it's amazing to me
how difficult it is to get anyone to address this and subsequent
questions in this line of thought in (what seems to me) a simple and
logical manner. I'm interested in testing this, without getting into
a debating contest where people try to score by various indirect means
rather than simply working together to build a more encompassing
understanding.
- Jef
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