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Why is good, good?

Sherbert November 08, 2019 at 23:07 1825 views 5 comments
Not what is good, but what makes good actually good?

Comments (5)

Sir2u November 10, 2019 at 04:46 #350886
Nothing makes good good.
It is just a matter of perception.
Sherbert November 10, 2019 at 12:40 #350953
I’m not sure that its just a matter of perception. For instance when kids bully another to the point of suicide, is that a matter of perception that the act is bad and some may perceive that as good?
Andrew4Handel November 10, 2019 at 14:14 #350981
I think that the bad is easier to define than the good. If you associate the bad with suffering. It is easy to imagine why someone would not like being in pain.

But the good appears to have more moral connotations. Just pure pleasure seems amoral and pleasure from exploiting others would seem bad. So usually to be good tends to require some kind of character and action based assessment.
Sherbert November 10, 2019 at 15:57 #351002
Quoting Andrew4Handel
But the good appears to have more moral connotations....


It would be easy to agree with you here, but after struggling with this for awhile, I would say morals are "taught" and here, good is an expression/measure of achieving those morals in the eyes of others and/or self-like in a myth-but we have different cultures with opposing views on the expression of some morals, thus opposing expressions of what is good, yet why is good, good, in either case?

In the recent cases of people bullying someone to the point of suicide, and coloring this in your mention of "pain", I think most would tend to agree that if someone interfered with the bullying, that the person who interfered did so because the pain of not doing so is greater than pain of not doing so. But that is only one color. We can color it in the idea that the person has great empathy for what ever reason and did so strictly from that color, or we could color it in social engineering, religion, etc.... I do not understand what makes good, good.
Sir2u November 10, 2019 at 20:22 #351084
Quoting Sherbert
For instance when kids bully another to the point of suicide, is that a matter of perception that the act is bad and some may perceive that as good?


So now we have a point of view, a perspective from which to perceive "good". Good in the moral sense is different from good in the tasty sense or bad for the environment sense.

In your example there are also several points of view, the bullies, the bullied and the other people that perceive the acts.

The bullies might think what they are doing is well deserved by the person they are bullying and think that it is OK to do it.
The person being bullied would probably think it was bad.
But a third party viewing individual acts or even several acts might not even think about it being bad. It might be perceived as normal quarrels between people or even as just plain stupidity being acted out.

It is only when specific details of a case are revealed that a proper judgement can be made.