Are any of those moral goods and bads? Should you be punished for eating food you don’t like?
I didn’t say anything about punishment. What I mean by bad here is given a choice between World A where I’m eating something tasty and World B where I’m eating something yucky, World B is less preferable, so it is bad in that sense.
“Bad” is a highly ambiguous term. The badness of a bad apple is not that of a bad movie is not that of a bad person.
Goodness and badness are traits of experience and actions, not objects. When we say someone is a “bad person”, we are capturing a bundle of intuitions about that person (they have bad intentions, their actions had bad results, etc). I don’t think analyzing goodness or badness as a trait of people generally is productive, since these intuitions aren’t actually rigorous (e.g. George Bush’s policies were generally bad, but PEFPAR saved tens millions of lives, so he was plausibly the best president of the 21st century in terms of lives saved?). Likewise with an apple or movie, calling an apple bad captures some intuitions about desireable properties of apples (tasty, does not give you illness, etc), but it’s not as if the apple has some inherent quality of goodness.
What I mean by bad here is given a choice between World A where I’m eating something tasty and World B where I’m eating something yucky, World B is less preferable, so it is bad in that sense.
If it is to be a theory of ethics at all, it needs to be bad in an ethical sense—not in the sense of aesthetics or personal preference, or inefficency, or the various other things that “bad” can mean.
I didn’t say anything about punishment.
I brought it in to act as a criterion of ethical badness.
“Bad” is a highly ambiguous term. The badness of a bad apple is not that of a bad movie is not that of a bad person.
Goodness and badness are traits of experience and actions, not objects.
English allows us to describe a rotten apple as bad. There are non ethical senses of bad. That’s why it’s not clear that the hedonic kind of badness that is immediately apprehensible in experience , the kind that analytical hedonism is based on, is the ethical kind I’m not saying that ethical goodness and badness are properties of objects, I’m doubting that they are properties of experiences. There are a lot more than two theories. Maybe ethical properties aren’t anywhere.
Since there is doubt, it not clear that analytical hedonism is the one true theory of metaethics. Which is normal—it’s not clear that any other theory is—metaethics is not a solved probelm.
There’s an argument for Analytical Hedonic consequentialism, which states that you can just immediately tell me what’s good and bad..The bad stuff hurts, the good stuff feels pleasurable. It seems appealing to its adherent s because it doesn’t need to appeal to non physical properties existing outside the mind or divine commands.
It has two main problems: It’s not at all clear that the kind of goodness and badness that is immediately apprehendable is an ethical kind; and it’s not clear how my subjective perceptions mean I should behave in any particular way toward others , as I don’t feel their pains.
I didn’t say anything about punishment. What I mean by bad here is given a choice between World A where I’m eating something tasty and World B where I’m eating something yucky, World B is less preferable, so it is bad in that sense.
Goodness and badness are traits of experience and actions, not objects. When we say someone is a “bad person”, we are capturing a bundle of intuitions about that person (they have bad intentions, their actions had bad results, etc). I don’t think analyzing goodness or badness as a trait of people generally is productive, since these intuitions aren’t actually rigorous (e.g. George Bush’s policies were generally bad, but PEFPAR saved tens millions of lives, so he was plausibly the best president of the 21st century in terms of lives saved?). Likewise with an apple or movie, calling an apple bad captures some intuitions about desireable properties of apples (tasty, does not give you illness, etc), but it’s not as if the apple has some inherent quality of goodness.
If it is to be a theory of ethics at all, it needs to be bad in an ethical sense—not in the sense of aesthetics or personal preference, or inefficency, or the various other things that “bad” can mean.
I brought it in to act as a criterion of ethical badness. “Bad” is a highly ambiguous term. The badness of a bad apple is not that of a bad movie is not that of a bad person.
English allows us to describe a rotten apple as bad. There are non ethical senses of bad. That’s why it’s not clear that the hedonic kind of badness that is immediately apprehensible in experience , the kind that analytical hedonism is based on, is the ethical kind I’m not saying that ethical goodness and badness are properties of objects, I’m doubting that they are properties of experiences. There are a lot more than two theories. Maybe ethical properties aren’t anywhere.
Since there is doubt, it not clear that analytical hedonism is the one true theory of metaethics. Which is normal—it’s not clear that any other theory is—metaethics is not a solved probelm.
There’s an argument for Analytical Hedonic consequentialism, which states that you can just immediately tell me what’s good and bad..The bad stuff hurts, the good stuff feels pleasurable. It seems appealing to its adherent s because it doesn’t need to appeal to non physical properties existing outside the mind or divine commands.
It has two main problems: It’s not at all clear that the kind of goodness and badness that is immediately apprehendable is an ethical kind; and it’s not clear how my subjective perceptions mean I should behave in any particular way toward others , as I don’t feel their pains.