↪Herg Good.

Now turn that into a general rule. Who is it we allow to decides the value of the cyst? — Banno

When a sentient being is awake, there are two answers to this: the being itself, and everyone else. When the being is unconscious, there is only one: everyone else. A cyst isn't yet conscious, so at this stage the answer has to be: everyone else. But everyone else should bear in mind, when dealing with a being (or cyst) that is not currently conscious but may at some stage become conscious, that if they kill that being (or cyst), they are preventing the occurrence of a life which may be, on balance, pleasant. I would argue that this is wrong, on the grounds that if the being were allowed to develop, it would value its own life positively, and we ought to take that into account when deciding whether to kill the being (or cyst).

I suggest that a being's moral standing is proportional to the maximum potential remaining lifetime net pleasure of that being. That is why, if a child and an old person are trapped in a burning building and we can only rescue one of them, we think we should rescue the child: it has a greater potential for future net pleasure. If we apply this logic to the cyst, it seems that the cyst must have moral standing that is even greater than that of the child, because its potential for net future pleasure, being for a longer period, is greater. I infer that if we kill a cyst, we are failing to respect its moral standing, which we should not do.

That a cyst is not of the same value as Mrs Smith remains true. — Banno

Every hopeful expectant parent would disagree with you. To them, because it's the cyst that will grow into their son or daughter, it's far more valuable than any random Mrs Smith who they probably don't even know.

You can't say a thing has value unless you also say for whom it has value, so your statement ''a cyst is not of the same value as Mrs Smith" has no truth-value.

↪Herg The fact that posters decided to pile on a premise that the thread rests on rather than the thread itself is the posters' fault, not OP's. — Lionino

Bob presented us with a supposed evil (the moral decay of modern society) and offered Aristotelian ethics as a cure. That was his justification for promoting Aristotelian ethics in the rest of his OP. If you remove that justification, all you are left with is a neutral precis of Aristotle. Bob was not being neutral: he was being passionate. Whether you agree with him or not, he had a serious point to make. Let's not take that away from him just to save his blushes.

Interestingly, Bob's justification is consequentialist: "if we were Aristotelians, the consequence would be an improved society". Bob has in the past pooh-poohed consequentialism, yet here he is arguing like a true consequentialist. As a partially lapsed consequentialist myself, I note the fact with a certain wry enjoyment.

The book comment applies to every thread here that puts forward a thesis. It is silly. — Lionino

Well, of course any philosophical debate can fill a book. But sometimes you can have a useful debate in a much smaller space. The problem with Bob's thesis is that because it makes sweeping claims about social history, the present state of society, and the supposed cause of that state (rampant moral anti-realism), it needs a lot of space in which to provide evidence and arguments to support these claims. There just isn't the space to do it here.

The OP is about Aristotle and the claim that his moral ideas are better than those that prevail in our own time. — Leontiskos

It isn't, actually. I wish it had been, because then this thread wouldn't have lost itself in the swamp of amateur social history. The OP makes a claim about society which would require hours of deep research to verify/modify/reject. That set the agenda for this thread, which at times has seemed less like a philosophy debate and more like old farts in a pub whinging about the state of the world. And Bob, for whom I have a great respect, has unwittingly cast himself in the role of the guy who knocks on your door and says, 'Don't you agree that the world is in a terrible state?', and then, if you are unwise enough to agree with him, hands you a copy of The Watchtower or some other brand of snake oil.

If Bob really wants to pursue this angle, he should write a book — a thread in a forum is not the right vehicle.

Let's by all means talk about whether Aristotle's moral ideas are better than later ideas, but let's keep it at the level of ethical theory, albeit illuminated with examples (such as our old friends the trolley and transplant problems). Social history is for sociologists and historians.

All I'm really picking up from this thread is that society has got better in some ways and worse in others. Well, hold the front page.

I think I'm done with this thread.

Modern society is decaying... — Bob Ross

That society is in moral decline is a common illusion (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06137-x). Every generation thinks this.

If you are going to make a case for a change in moral thinking based on the idea that society's morals are in decline, you need to prove that they actually are. I for one don't believe it, and I've been around for over 70 years. There are good, bad and indifferent people in every generation, and that's just how the human race is.

Thank you Bob (and thanks also for explaining how to link to people).

Now you are not a consequentialist, but the objection usually comes from consequentialists. They will say, "You care about your principle, but I care about human life!" Well, no. The deontologist cares about human life via deontological principles, and the consequentialist cares about human life via consequentialist principles. There is no one who bypasses principles altogether and just cares about human life in a way that overrides all principles and all rational analysis. — Leontiskos

At the moment I don't know if I'm a consequentialist or not. Some sort of weird Kantian-Benthamite deonto-consequentialist hybrid, I think. A philosophical chimera, perhaps.

Be that as it may, I must pick you up on your claim that "the deontologist cares about human life via deontological principles." If the driver follows Bob's deontological principle and does not turn the wheel, all four people in the road end up dead. How is this consistent with your claim that "the deontologist cares about human life"?

Added later: I'm sorry, this post is not up to standard. I am finding it impossible to find the time to participate properly in these discussions, so I am leaving the thread. Thanks to all who have talked to me, and in particular yourself and @Bob Ross.

Surely we need not love those who we do not interact with — Leontiskos

This is the heart of the question, I think. One problem I have with your reading is that it divides humanity into two groups — those we interact with, who we are required to love, and those who we do not interact with, who we are not required to love. We see all too often what that division leads to: at best, neglect; at worst, racism, sectarianism, oppression, enslavement, war.

Another problem I have with your reading is that it puts the cart before the horse. Surely the idea is to love first, and seek to interact because of that love? Or, in Kantian terms, to think of all humans as ends, to think of their happiness as if it were our happiness, and then seek to interact with them so as to promote that happiness?

How do I treat Ahmad as an end? By thinking of all humans as ends, so that if Ahmad crosses my path and I see that he needs help, I am ready to help him.

Consider Putin. Prior to his invasion of Ukraine, he didn't interact with most Ukrainians. So according to your reading, he wasn't required to treat them as ends. But isn't what was wrong with his invasion precisely the fact that he didn't treat the people of Ukraine as ends?

Interaction is not a necessary condition for treating someone as an end.
— Herg

I would class the counterexamples you are presenting as examples of interaction. You are consciously interacting with someone. It makes no difference that they are not consciously interacting with you. In the cases you present you interact with someone in a conscious way who is interacting with you in a non-conscious way (by their demeanor, or their need of a charitable donation, etc.).

The point here is that we can easily broaden the concept of "interaction" that you are presupposing, and even then the problem that I posed to you does not go away. You are still not interacting with the 235 million people in Pakistan even on this broader notion of interaction, and therefore you are failing to treat them as an end. I think interaction is the right word, but we could rephrase it as follows: "If you are not engaging in an activity (in the philosophical sense) towards someone, then you are not treating them as an end. Therefore in order to treat each person as an end we must be engaged in an activity towards each person." — Leontiskos

In the Groundwork, after he has introduced the 2nd formulation, Kant says this:
"Fourthly, as regards meritorious duties to others, the natural end which all men seek is their own happiness. Now humanity could no doubt subsist if everybody contributed nothing to the happiness of others but at the same time refrained from deliberately impairing their happiness. This is, however, merely to agree negatively and not positively with humanity as an end in itself unless everyone endeavours also, so far as in him lies, to further the ends of others. For the ends of a subject who is an end to himself must, if this conception is to have its full effect in me, be also, as far as possible, my ends."

Kant is clearly saying here that one can only be fully an end to oneself by positively adopting the natural ends of others (namely their happiness) as one's own ends. This is one of four passages meant to illustrate the 2nd formulation, so it seems to follow that he intended the 2nd formulation to be read as requiring positive efforts in that direction.

Treating someone as an end, in Kant's view, therefore means positively seeking to further the ends of others; there is no mention of interaction, or any similar condition that might place a limit on one's responsibility to further those ends. I think the idea that such a condition is required stems from mistakenly reading the 2nd formulation as a purely negative injunction; but I think the above passage shows that Kant intended it to be read as a positive injunction as well. If he did, then the notion of interaction is superfluous, and the 2nd formulation simply enjoins us to treat everyone (including the 235 millions in Pakistan) as ends at all times, and as part of that (but not the whole of it) to refrain from treating anyone merely as a means.

I think that, whatever we think Kant meant, he could have put the 2nd formulation itself better: it is rather terse, and the exact nature of the relation between treating someone as an end and not treating them as a mere means is not made clear. But as I've explained, I think the ensuing text resolves the matter.

I think we should also consider the fact that Kant was a Christian, and would have had in mind Christ's injunction to love our neighbour as ourselves. Kant's exhortation to adopt the natural ends of others as our own end is saying much the same thing. If the 2nd formulation requires there to be interaction before we are able to treat someone as an end, then a millionaire who never watches the news or reads the papers, lest he find out that there are people who are starving or in dire need who could benefit from his money, would pass the test of the 2nd formulation; but he would not be loving his neighbour as himself, nor would he pass Kant's test of adopting the starving person's natural ends as his own.

@RogueAI, @Bob Ross, @Leontiskos

I apologise for not answering your posts. I haven't gone away, but the past week has been difficult. I shall try to reply to them in the next few days.

(Apologies for not linking to you guys in this post, I don't know how to do that.)

This begs the question between us, which is whether killing Alan and Betty is an immoral act if it is the only way of saving the lives of Charles and Dora. — Herg

I was just answering your question. — Bob Ross

My point is that I consider YOUR position to be immoral. It is universally held that a human life is among the most valuable things in the universe; perhaps THE most valuable. Yet in the trolley and driver scenarios, you take the view that human lives are less important than the supposed principle that it is always, irrespective of all other considerations, wrong to take an innocent human life. Why you introduce the notion of innocence, I have no idea, because in both scenarios there is no difference in the innocence of those you think should not be killed, and those you are willing to let die. At the same time, you draw an entirely sophistical distinction between a moral choice that results in the loss of a life by way of a bodily movement, and a moral choice that results in the loss of a life without any bodily movement. You fail to understand what has been pointed out to you, that moral character attaches to the choice, not to the bodily action or inaction by which the choice produces its result.

If you wish to defend your position to me — and I suspect you don't, because you show a marked impatience towards those of your interlocutors who wish to tackle you on the morality of your position, rather than on technical details such as the exact meaning and scope of 'intention' — then you need to post a sound argument that derives your contentious principle from agreed facts, such as facts of nature (you have said that, like me, you are an ethical naturalist). If you have already posted such an argument, then please direct me to it; so far, you have only directed me to your ideas about the concept of goodness, which, while obviously relevant and of interest, will not by itself stand in the place of a sound argument from fact to moral principle.

How do you know which actions, on the one hand, are immoral, and which, on the other, are permissible or obligatory? — Herg

Ultimately based off of what is Good; and how best to progress towards and preserve it. — Bob Ross

See above. There is not nearly enough detail here to show how you derive the principle that it is wrong to kill innocent people by positive action.

You need to work that out first, and then that will tell you whether someone is a moral agent or not. So actions are more central to normative ethics than being a moral agent. — Herg

Actions are a part of being a moral agent — Bob Ross

No, this is just loose talk. There is an obvious distinction between an action and the agent who performs the action.

and what one needs to “work out first” is knowledge of The Good. — Bob Ross

I agree (though your ideas and mine are rather different in this area), but as I say, you need to show how to derive your contentious principle from this knowledge.

In terms of what I think the highest good is, and why I think it is immoral to intentionally kill an innocent human being, I have already explicated this to you — Bob Ross

The first, yes, but not, as far as I can discover, the second.

—but you never responded to them. I would suggest you reread them and respond if you want to engage in that aspect of the conversation. — Bob Ross

I will respond to your post about goodness if I have time, but since my main objection to your position is that I strongly disagree with your contentious principle, I would prefer to read a proper argument from you justifying the principle, and respond to that.

Then to expand, all of the following are examples of failing to treat others as ends (the first two are your own examples):

If you kill someone, then you are not treating them as an end.
If you let someone die when you could save them, the same is true.
If you sit down next to someone on the train without interacting with them, the same is true.
If you see a street performer and you do not pay attention to them, the same is true. — Leontiskos

I think your third example is not necessarily correct. Suppose I sit next to a guy on a train and I see that he is listening to music on his headphones with his eyes shut. He's clearly enjoying the music, tapping his feet, smiling, and so on. I've had a shitty day, and I really want to talk to someone, I have left my phone in the office, and we are the only two people on the train, so he's the only person available. But if I interrupt the guy's listening, I am being selfish, so I decide to leave him alone. Eventually I get off the train. He's still listening with his eyes shut. We never interacted, I don't even know if he knew I was there, and yet I treated him as an end by not spoiling his enjoyment of the music.

Interaction is not a necessary condition for treating someone as an end. If I give a donation to a charity that works to help people in Gaza or Ukraine, I am treating those people as ends, but it can't be said that I interact with them: I don't even know who they are.

The second formulation is a limiting principle, primarily specifying how we cannot treat others. It is not a requirement about how we must positively treat each person at each moment of their existence. — Leontiskos

That is where I disagree. And perhaps, if Kant understood his second formulation the way you understand it and not the way I understand it, I am disagreeing with Kant. But in the end I don't think that is what really matters..

What you are saying is that, under my view, saving Charles and Dora is less important than not doing immmoral acts; and that I certainly agree with (and I think so should you). — Bob Ross

This begs the question between us, which is whether killing Alan and Betty is an immoral act if it is the only way of saving the lives of Charles and Dora.

I am a virtue ethicist, so I think a moral compass is the most vital and important aspect of normative ethics--it is the kernel so to speak. Being a moral agent, in the sense of embodying what is good and not what is bad (by doing at least morally permissible and obligatory actions), is of central and paramount importance. Any theory that posits otherwise seems to be missing the point of normative ethics entirely (IMHO). — Bob Ross

How do you know which actions, on the one hand, are immoral, and which, on the other, are permissible or obligatory? You need to work that out first, and then that will tell you whether someone is a moral agent or not. So actions are more central to normative ethics than being a moral agent.

[1] If you kill someone, then you are not treating them as an end (unless it is mercy killing).

[2] If you let someone die when you could save them, the same is true.

[...]

...the principle that we should treat people as ends rather than just as means (which I shall label EP)...
— Herg

Similar to what ↪Bob Ross has said, I don't think (1) or (2) violate EP. (1) and (2) fail to treat someone as an end, but they do not treat that person as a means. EP requires that we "treat people as ends rather than just as means." (1) and (2) violate the separate principle that we must always treat everyone as an end, which is not a commonly accepted moral principle. — Leontiskos

It's 50 years since I read Kant, so I am horribly rusty. But when I look up Kant's second formulation of the categorical imperative, I find that it reads as follows:
"Handle so, dass du die Menschheit sowohl in deiner Person, als in der Person eines jeden andern jederzeit zugleich als Zweck, niemals bloß als Mittel brauchest“
Google translate renders this as:
"Act in such a way that you use humanity both in your person and in the person of everyone else at all times (1) as an end, (2) never just as a means.”
I have inserted the numbers here. I take (1) to be complete as it stands, and (2) to be entailed by (1). Because (1) is complete and is not dependent on (2), I question your statement that "the separate principle that we must always treat everyone as an end... is not a commonly accepted moral principle," because that is in fact (1). (Unless you mean that few people accept Kant's second formulation. But I don't think you mean that.)

Whatever Kant meant by what he wrote, the emboldened rendering above is what I was aiming for (except that I think all beings capable of pain and/or pleasure should be treated as ends, not just humans: "The question is not, Can they reason nor Can they talk, but, Can they suffer?" ).

Surely the point here is that if let Hitler live, he will continue to fail to treat millions of people as ends by murdering them; and our only way of treating those people as ends is to fail to treat Hitler, and unfortunately the janitor, as ends. So we either fail to treat two people as ends, or we are complicit in the failure to treat millions as ends.
— Herg

This is the same equivocation between EP and the separate principle. Kantian morality does not admit of perplexity, where there are cases where we must decide who to treat as an end. — Leontiskos

I'm sorry, I don't know what you are getting at in your second sentence here. Can you put it another way?

I am not sure how well Benthamite utilitarianism mixes with the second formulation of Kant's Categorical Imperative. It is a bit of an odd mixture, and this movement from (Kant's) EP to the separate principle is a case in point. As I see it, the difficulty is that EP can't really fit the role of a "subordinate end," to use Bentham's language. Bentham's approach seems opposed to Kant's, and Kant seems directly opposed to consequentialism. — Leontiskos

I don't see the EP as a subordinate end, and I apologise if I gave the impression that I did. It's rather the other way round: I see the EP (in my two-part formulation) as primary, and the hedonic calculus, if we need it all, as secondary.

In fact I am no longer sure whether we need the hedonic calculus. I am a hedonist, and so I think that treating people as ends must in the end be a matter of trying to give them more net pleasure: but I don't think this necessarily commits us to the traditional utilitarian hedonic calculus. But I must confess that I only recently stopped being a utilitarian, and my ideas in this area are still somewhat in flux.

1. I did not use the five, by letting them die, as a means because there is no action I took which leveraged a means towards that end — Bob Ross

In the case of Alan, Betty, Charles and Dora, where the driver let Charles and Dora die by not turning the wheel, can we at any rate agree that you consider the lives of Charles and Dora to be less important than obedience to the rule that you should not kill an innocent person by positive action?

↪RogueAI Correct. If they know that they are going to kill an innocent person by intentionally killing hitler; then they are intentionally killing that innocent person to kill hitler. — Bob Ross

Surely the point here is that if let Hitler live, he will continue to fail to treat millions of people as ends by murdering them; and our only way of treating those people as ends is to fail to treat Hitler, and unfortunately the janitor, as ends. So we either fail to treat two people as ends, or we are complicit in the failure to treat millions as ends.

I want to put this train of thought in your mind:

If you kill someone, then you are not treating them as an end (unless it is mercy killing).

If you let someone die when you could save them, the same is true.

Therefore, if you let your car kill four people instead of two, you are not treating the additional two as ends.

Why did you let your car kill the additional two people? Because you believed in the principle (which I will label IP) that it is wrong to kill innocent people by positive action.

So you had an end in view when you let your car kill those additional two people, the end being that your behaviour should conform to IP. And letting your car kill those two additional people was a means to that end. We have already said that you did not treat those additional two people as ends; so in fact you treated them merely as means, which according to the principle that we should treat people as ends rather than just as means (which I shall label EP) is morally wrong.

We now have two conflicting principles: IP and EP. Which should we obey?

I think we should obey EP. For one thing, it is applicable in all situations, whereas IP is only applicable in situations where someone dies. For another, the range of persons (or sentient beings, if you want to cast the moral net wider) is as wide as it could be: in fact it is coterminous with the entire class of persons (or sentient beings). And this is unsurprising, because if beings have moral status, then it is arguably a tautology to also say that they should be treated as ends. There is also the point that there is a fighting chance that we may be able to derive, if not IP itself, then something very like IP, from EP, while clearly the reverse is impossible.

I would say that EP is really the entire point of morality. It is the principle that we should try as best we can to respect (and, where necessary, look after) the interests of others. We do not respect their interests by letting our cars plough into them. And if there are supposed principles where, when we obey them, we find ourselves trampling over the interests of others rather than respecting them, I think we should at the very least be very suspicious of those principles.

I don't see how we're treating Magnus as an end by forcing him to play chess with the aliens. — RogueAI

We aren't; that's the bit where we're treating him as a means.

There is nothing at stake for him. He's not in any danger. We're not saving his life or bettering his condition in any way by forcing him to play/making him our slave. — RogueAI

You don't have to save someone's life or better their condition to be treating them as an end. If you're playing chess and enjoying it, then my leaving you alone to enjoy yourself is treating you as an end.

We're forcing him to play strictly for our own ends. — RogueAI

Of course, but you said this:

The aliens like him and will gift him a good life no matter what he decides. — RogueAI

So we can treat him as an end by letting him go to the aliens. Of course he didn't want to play, but we have hypnotised him so that he now does, and presumably he will enjoy doing so. If you want to tweak the scenario so that he suffers while he's playing, then in effect we're complicit in torturing him, in which case the situation is essentially the same as it was with the kid, and so we shouldn't hand him over, we should fight the aliens instead.

Suppose that instead of wanting a kid to torture, the aliens really really want to play Magnus Carlsen in chess. If he agrees to play, humanity gets gifted technology. If he refuses, we all get sent to the salt mines, except Magnus. The aliens like him and will gift him a good life no matter what he decides. But Magnus refuses to play! His ego is such that he would rather the world burn then being coerced into a game. Should humanity force Magnus to play? Maybe by threatening to execute him if he doesn't? Wouldn't that be treating him as a means? — RogueAI

First of all, let's be clear: there is nothing wrong with treating someone as a means, provided you also treat them as an end.

I don't think the threat to execute him is your best option. Ex hypothesi, we are not going to follow through on that threat, and he may know that, so the threat may not work. Suppose we hypnotise him instead? Then his will is under our control, and we can make him play.

Clearly we are then using him as a means. The question is, can we also treat him as an end?

Many people would no doubt say no, because in effect we are treating him as a slave. I'm going to say something now that a lot of people would probably disagree with: treating a human being as a slave does not entirely preclude treating them as an end. This is because it is possible to treat a slave well out of a concern for their own feelings and welfare. It is even possible (though very rare) to treat someone as an end precisely by enslaving them (if, for example, the only alternative to slavery was that they be put to death). I am able to take this view because, as a strict hedonist, I do not regard freedom as an intrinsic good. Freedom is good only insofar as it conduces to greater net pleasure.

So my solution to your problem is to seek some way of getting Carlsen to play, such as hypnosis, that will still enable us to treat him well for his own sake, which is what I understand by treating someone as an end. This is a different solution from your original problem, because in that case we were treating the child as a means but very definitely not treating him or her as an end.

On a purely hedonic calculus, isn't the moral thing to do to give them the kid to torture? — RogueAI

It would be, indeed. But I take the view that the hedonic calculus should only be applied subject to the imperative to treat sentient beings as ends, and handing the kid over for torture would be treating him or her as a mere means, not an end.

The moral thing to do is what it has always been in such situations, e.g. in 1939 when we were made a not dissimilar offer by the Nazis: you fight the bastards.

When you say that 'eudamonia is the highest moral good' is the ultimate underpinning, do you literally mean that nothing further underpins that? Because if so, then I must ask you, what reason do we have to believe that the proposition 'eudamonia is the highest moral good' is true? — ”Herg”

I meant in the sense of what morally grounds it. Being the highest moral good, it is the ultimate good which everything else is assessed under. Of course, I believe there are reasons to believe that it is the highest moral good. — Bob Ross

Can you tell us at least some of the reasons?

The point is that not turning the wheel is just as much a choice as turning it — Herg

You are confusing decisions (or choices) with actions. Deciding NOT to do something, is NOT an action. — Bob Ross

I didn't say not turning the wheel was an action, I said it was a choice, so it is not true that I am "confusing decisions (or choices) with actions". You are changing what I wrote. Please don't do that.

If one agrees that it is immoral to intentionally kill an innocent human being and they cannot save a person without intentionally killing an innocent human being, then the only morally permissible option is to do nothing. — Bob Ross

I don't agree that it is UNCONDITIONALLY immoral to intentionally kill an innocent human being. As I've said, I think it is morally acceptable if either one has no other choice, or it is done in order to prevent a greater wrong. This is perhaps the essential bone of contention between us. I think we owe each other an explanation of why we take the positions on this that we do. I will start by explaining why I think the way I do.

I am an ethical naturalist and hedonist: I believe that the only intrinsic good is pleasure (strictly, pleasantness), and the only intrinsic evil is pain (strictly, unpleasantness). If you wish to go into further detail, I can explain further why I believe this.

From the fact (as I see it) that pleasure and pain are the only intrinsic good and evil, I derive the more or less Benthamite view that the entities that have moral status are all and only those entities that can experience pleasure and pain. These are therefore the entities we should treat as ends, not as mere means.

We do not treat an entity as an end if we kill it without good reason. We also do not treat it as an end if we let it die, when we could save it, without good reason. The mere fact that letting an entity die does not involve physical action, whereas killing an entity does, is not a good reason, because the only intrinsic evil is pain, and the good (i.e. pleasure) that that entity would have experienced is equally lost either way. The physical act of killing has no intrinsic value, either good or bad: its only value is whatever value it acquires through being instrumental in a course of action (or inaction) which either treats an entity as an end or fails to do so, or (subject to the primary requirement to treat entities as ends) increases pleasure or decreases pain (or the reverse). Killing an entity and letting it die are therefore, morally speaking, on all fours.

There you have my reasoning. If I have left anything unclear, let me know and I will elucidate if I can.

I would now like you to tell us the reasoning that leads you to conclude that it is UNCONDITIONALLY immoral to intentionally kill an innocent human being.

The floor is yours.

I make a distinction between letting someone die vs. killing them that doesn’t appear in your view at all. — Bob Ross

It doesn't appear in my view because I don't think it is morally significant.

Here's the car driver barrelling along the road. He turns a corner and suddenly sees four people in front of him. (Perhaps he is in a road race and these people are from out of town and didn't know it was happening.) He realises that they are too close for him to avoid altogether: avoiding all four is therefore not an available choice. He has two choices: if he doesn't turn the wheel, he will kill all four, whereas if he turns the wheel, he will only kill two. To kill four is worse than to kill two, so he turns the wheel.

The point is that not turning the wheel is just as much a choice as turning it. The decision whether to turn the wheel is his and his alone; if he chooses to turn it he will be responsible for the outcome (or such part of the outcome as is under his control; the fact that he will inevitably kill at least two people is not under his control), and if he chooses not to turn it he will be equally responsible. Since he is equally responsible whether he turns the wheel or not, he is just as morally responsible whichever he chooses to do. There is no sense in the suggestion that he is less morally responsible if he doesn't turn the wheel: the moral responsibility attaches to the act of choosing, not to the physical action of turning the wheel, and there is no special exemption for acts of choosing that do not result in physical movements of the body or of machines moved by the body; that is not where moral responsibility has purchase.

6. That the act of swerving is the immediate means of saving the four, it does NOT follow that killing the two people was not a means of saving the four. If the course of action intended requires the sacrificing of an innocent person, even if it be mediated, then the sacrificing of that innocent person is a means towards that course of action (i.e., end). — Bob Ross

You are claiming here that sacrificing the two people is required in order to avoid killing all four — in other words to save the other two. Let's see.

There are four people strung out across the road: from left to right, they are Alan, Betty, Charles and Dora. If the car does not swerve, all four will be killed. In the event, the car swerves to the left, and only Alan and Betty are killed: Charles and Dora are saved.

If you are right, and the killing of Alan and Betty is required in order to save Charles and Dora, then that must mean that if Alan and Betty had not been there, the car could not have swerved and saved the lives of Charles and Dora. But this is clearly not true: whether Alan and Betty are present has no bearing on whether the car can swerve and hence save the lives of Charles and Dora. So it can't be true that their presence, and their being sacrificed, is required in order for Charles and Dora to be saved.

If it really was true that Alan and Betty's presence, and their being killed, was required in order that Charles and Dora can be saved, then I would agree with you that the killing of Alan and Betty is a means of saving the lives of Charles and Dora. But their presence, and their being killed, is not required, and therefore it is not a means of saving Charles and Dora.

BTW, I hope it is clear that you can give up the belief that the killing of Alan and Betty is a means to saving the lives of Charles and Dora, without also giving up the belief that it is wrong to kill an innocent person. I agree that it is wrong to kill an innocent person, except in circumstances where it cannot be avoided, or where it is necessary in order to prevent some greater wrong. The point is that the driver (if he is a moral sort of person) would save all four innocent lives if he could, but the situation prevents him from doing so, and for that, he is not to blame.

If I have understood him correctly, then I would like to ask him what, in his view, underpins this truth? Does he, for example, think that it is a moral truth because God makes it so? — Herg

I would say the immediate underpinning is that beings of a rational kind have rights, rights are inherently deontological, and they have the right to not be killed if they are innocent. The ultimate underpinning is that eudamonia (viz., flourishing, well-being, and happiness in the deepest, richest, and most persistent sense) is the highest moral good; and the best way to pragmatically structure society is to give people basic rights to best promote and progress towards a world with the richest and most harmonious sense of eudamonia. — Bob Ross

When you say that 'eudamonia is the highest moral good' is the ultimate underpinning, do you literally mean that nothing further underpins that? Because if so, then I must ask you, what reason do we have to believe that the proposition 'eudamonia is the highest moral good' is true?

It seems to me that the question at hand asks what it means to deliberately/intentionally/purposefully kill. It seems that although you and I may disagree on a great deal, we do agree that to pull the lever is not to deliberately/intentionally/purposefully kill the single person. — Leontiskos

Certainly 'to deliberately/intentionally/purposefully kill the single person' is not an adequate or accurate description of the operator's intention when he pulls the lever. An adequate and accurate description would be 'to minimise the number of people who are going to be killed'.

However, I'm not sure that this means that I can agree with you that:

to pull the lever is not to deliberately/intentionally/purposefully kill the single person — Leontiskos

because after all, the operator intentionally pulls the lever in the belief that by so doing, he is going to kill the single person. And this surely is the same thing as killing him intentionally.

I don't believe, even if there were such a thing as moral guilt, that this would make him morally guilty, because I believe his moral responsibility would be to minimise the number of people who are going to be killed, and killing the single person intentionally is unavoidable if he is to do this.

I think what is happening here is that you are hoping that the deaths that occur via the pilot's omission are better than the deaths that occur via the pilot's commission, even if more people end up dying on the omission. — Leontiskos

Actually I think Bob is taking the straightforward position that it is always wrong to deliberately kill an innocent person. If I understand him, he regards this as an absolute moral truth, completely non-negotiable, so that 'you must not deliberately kill an innocent person' is a moral imperative that admits of no exceptions, however bad the consequences of obeying it. He will no doubt correct me if I have misunderstood him.

If I have understood him correctly, then I would like to ask him what, in his view, underpins this truth? Does he, for example, think that it is a moral truth because God makes it so?

You are confusing using someone as a means towards something, with the means of using them as a means. E.g., the lever is the means to using the one person as a means to avoid the bad outcome [of five dying]. — Bob Ross

This would be true if the second supposed means was, in fact, needed to save the five; but as Leontiskos has pointed out, it isn't:

something could happen where the one frees himself from the track and the five would be saved all the same. — Leontiskos

Since the second supposed means is not needed, it isn't a means at all. You really need to accept this so that this discussion can get somewhere more interesting (e.g. moving on to consider the fundamental dispute between deontologists and consequentialists in the trolley problem, the transplant problem, and. if I may be allowed to widen the scope a little further, the Omelas problem).

Killing one person to save the five is what enables the person to save the five. Without being able to kill the one person, they cannot save the five. — Bob Ross

You are saying two different things here. Let's take them separately:

"Killing one person to save the five is what enables the person to save the five. "
This is false. Suppose at the last minute the 1 person rolls off the track and saves himself. The operator has still managed to save the other five, and that is because it was using the lever that enabled him to save them, not the presence of the other 1 person. The means is the same whether the 1 person is killed or manages to save himself.

"Without being able to kill the one person, they cannot save the five."
If you mean that they would be unable to save the 5 if they lacked the ability to kill the 1, that is true. But this is not because the 1 is the means of killing the 5, it is because to be able to kill the 1 person they need to be able to switch the train, and it is this switching that is the means of saving the 5, not the killing of the 1.

I think what is preventing you grasping the obvious fact that killing the 1 person is not the means of saving the 5 is your belief that intention to kill innocent people is enough to convict someone of moral guilt. Even if there were such a thing as moral guilt (which there is not, because as I have said, there is no such thing as moral responsibility), this would not be the case, because, as in the trolley case, an agent may be in a situation where they cannot avoid killing innocent people. If they did not choose to be in such a situation, then no blame can attach to them for being in that situation, and consequently no blame can attach to them for then intentionally killing some of these people, as long as they intend to kill as few as the situation allows.

It was an analogy, and perfectly sound. — Bob Ross

Arguments by analogy are never sound, they just confuse the issue.

Thirdly, you did not answer my point, which was that the 1 person who is killed is not the means of saving the other 5 — Herg

It absolutely is, if you intentionally kill one person to save five. No way around that. — Bob Ross

A means is something that facilitates or enables the performance of some action. The presence of the 1 person on the track does not facilitate or enable the switching of the train to another track and the consequent saving of 5 lives; it's the lever that does that, the presence of the person on the track is irrelevant.

The biggest problem with consequentialism I have is that it rests on a false assumption of how moral responsibility works. Not sure how deep you want to get into that debate though. — Bob Ross

There is no such thing as moral responsibility, because it would require free will, and there is no such thing as free will.

Secondly, I would say that one must continue to go straight, assuming they cannot try to veer away to avoid all 4 altogether (and have to choose between intending to kill the two to save the other two and letting all 4 die), because, otherwise, they would be intending to kill two people as a means toward the good end of saving two people.

A person that says otherwise, would be acting like a consequentialist full-stop: they would be allowing a person to intend to kill an innocent person for the sole sake of the greater good. — Bob Ross

Exactly so. The whole point about the greater good is that it IS the greater good, i.e. is better than the alternative. That is precisely why one should aim to achieve it. (And yes, I am a consequentialist. Tell me what you think is wrong with that.)

You need to show either that killing only 2 people instead of killing all 4 is NOT the greater good, i.e. that it is a mistake to label it so, and if so, wherein the mistake lies. Or you need to justify your apparent belief that killing 4 people is morally preferable to killing only 2, which frankly just looks callous and irrational.

If one diverts a track to save 5 people knowing 1 person will die as a result of it (that wouldn’t have otherwise), then they are intending to sacrifice that 1 person to save the 5. They cannot validly say “the 1 person was merely a bad side-effect of saving the 5”. That doesn’t cut it, nor has anything remotely similar cut it in the court of law. — Bob Ross

Well, firstly, you can't decide questions in moral philosophy by appealing to courts of law. The most a study of legal systems can tell you is what the people who drafted the laws thought was morally right; it won't tell you if they were correct.

Secondly, I agree that the operator intentionally sacrifices 1 person to save 5. Since either 1 or 5 people must die, and he can't prevent that, and since 5 lives are more valuable than 1, sacrificing 1 to save 5 is the morally right thing to do. The fact that he may be punished for doing it is irrelevant.

Thirdly, you did not answer my point, which was that the 1 person who is killed is not the means of saving the other 5. I may be wrong here, but I wonder if you think that if X fails to treat Y as an end, then he must be treating him merely as a means. This is not true, because there could be another reason: it could be that something prevents X from treating Y as an end. This is the case in the trolley problem: someone is bound to die, and therefore not be treated as an end, but the operator can't do anything about this. His only choice is between failing to treat 1 person as an end, and failing to treat 5 people as ends. The morally right thing to do is to fail to treat the least number of people he can as ends, which means switching the train.

If one amends the trolley example such that the person who decides whether to pull the lever is actually, instead, the train operator and can choose to divert the train to the track with the 1 or stay on the track with the 5; then I would say it is immoral for the operator to divert the track. They cannot intentionally sacrifice one person to save five: they are still using that sacrificed person as a means towards an end. — Bob Ross

This is incorrect. The means they are using to save the 5 is the lever by which they divert the train. The 1 who dies is not the means, but merely someone who unfortunately happens to be on the other track. In this way the trolley problem differs from the transplant problem, where the healthy patient actually IS the means of saving the 5 unhealthy patients.

Moore endeavored to establish the first part by means of the so-called open-question argument. Whatever definition one proposes for good, he said, it is always possible to ask of the definition whether it is itself good. For instance, if one defines good as pleasure or what promotes the greatest happiness, it is always possible to ask, with significance, whether pleasure or what promotes the greatest happiness is after all good. But this would be impossible if the proposed definition really were a definition. The question would then not be significant. Good would just mean ‘pleasure’ or ‘what promotes the greatest happiness,’ and the question whether pleasure or what promotes the greatest happiness is good would not be a significant or open one. It would be answered in the asking. This result will always happen whatever definition one proposes for good. Hence good must be indefinable. — Peter L. P. Simpson, On the Naturalistic Fallacy and St. Thomas, pp. 2-3

Moore's reasoning is inductive, not deductive, and it implicitly begs the question. He takes just two suggested definitions (that 'good' means the same as 'pleasure' or 'what promotes the greatest happiness'), finds these implausible (which is what he means when he says we can ask 'with significance' whether they are good), and then infers, simply on the basis of these two failed suggestions, that 'this result will always happen whatever definition one proposes' (my underlining). He does not justify this inference from the particular to the universal in any way; the inference rests on nothing more than Moore's own prior conviction that good is indefinable, and thus begs the question. Moore's conclusion would only be justified if he had considered all possible suggested definitions of 'good' and found them wanting.

A plausible definition of 'good' is given by A.C.Ewing:
"'We may... define "good" as "fitting object of a pro attitude"... it will [then] be easy enough to analyse bad as "fitting object of an anti attitude", this term covering dislike, disapproval, avoidance, etc.' (The Definition of Good, pp. 152 and 168)

This kind of definition is characteristic of fitting attitude theories. I think it needs further refinement, but it is a step in the right direction, a direction that never occurred to Moore.

I think that what you have provided is a list of reasons why we might want to call something 'good' — that it's advantageous, or pleasant, or helpful, or accommodating — which is not the same thing as a definition.
— Herg

Define definition then for me, please, so I can proceed on satisfying your demand to comply to the form of the definition of any thing, as defined by you. — god must be atheist

I Googled 'definition definition' (that was fun), and it said 'a statement of the exact meaning of a word, especially in a dictionary.' That will do for me.

I'm suggesting that if someone says 'that painting is good', they probably don't mean 'that painting is any 3 or more of advantageous, pleasant, helpful, or accommodating.' It seems unlikely. What advantage would the average person find in a painting? What would it help them to do? What wishes would it accommodate? They might find it pleasant, but equally, I think someone could find a painting unpleasant (think of Francis Bacon's Screaming Popes) and still think the painting was good.

So, if you like, paintings are my offer of the counter-example you were asking people to provide.

"Good" is an adjective denoting that a thing that is good is a thing that is advantageous and pleasant and helpful and accommodating OR at least three at the same time and in the same respect of the aforementioned qualifiers. — god must be atheist

Caveat: the definition I gave has been amended properly by Bert1, which states that pleasure is good, and a final means by itself (as per Hume), and the other thing that is good is a process, tool, action, opinion, that promotes the eventuality of a pleasure to happen. — god must be atheist

OP is asking if good can be defined, and is therefore, by implication, asking for a definition of 'good'. I think that what you have provided is a list of reasons why we might want to call something 'good' — that it's advantageous, or pleasant, or helpful, or accommodating — which is not the same thing as a definition.

However, I think your list gives us a clue. Here are two lists, the one you gave for 'good', and a corresponding one for 'bad':
Good: advantageous, pleasant, helpful, accommodating
Bad: disadvantageous, unpleasant, unhelpful, obstructive

The four words in the first list are all positives; the four in the second list are all negatives. I think this is a clue as to what 'good' and 'bad' are doing: they're somehow separating objects into two groups, those about which we want to say something positive, and those about which we want to say something negative.

Here's another clue:

When a speaker declares x is good, they are marking their approval of x. Moreover, they are asserting that this approval springs from something intrinsic to x itself. If I say "Sally is good", I don't merely like Sally, according to me Sally is so constituted as to be intrinsically liked. — hypericin

I think this is pretty nearly right. The only thing I would want to do (apart from removing the words 'intrinsic' and intrinsically', because we can say that something is good because it is instrumentally good, not just because it is intrinsically good) is to replace 'approval' with something more general, in keeping with the fact that god-must-be-an-atheist's list has four items in it that aspire to cover a range of different responses. As I see it, if I say 'Sally is good', while it may indeed be the case that I approve of Sally and think that she is likeable, what I'm actually saying (because 'good' serves only to connect an object with positivity, and not with anything as specific as approval or liking) is that Sally deserves or merits or warrants some kind of positive attitude or response — which might indeed be approval or liking — but without pointing directly at any one of these responses, merely waving a hand vaguely at the entire class of positive responses, from mild approval through degrees of liking to active seeking out, without telling you which of them is my actual response or attitude. (I think of this as the 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' theory of the meaning of 'good': John Cleese on the castle wall saying, with a comic French accent, 'I fart in your general direction.')

Where this ends up, I think, is at some kind of fitting attitude theory (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fitting-attitude-theories/). There's a quote from A.C.Ewing in this article which I think just about sums it up:
“if we analyse good as ‘fitting object of a pro attitude’, it will be easy enough to analyse bad as ‘fitting object of an anti attitude’, this term covering dislike, disapproval, avoidance, etc.”
My personal preference is to define 'good' as 'merits a pro-response', and 'bad' as 'merits an anti-response', but I think that's detail. The article makes the point that "FA theories come in both cognitivist and noncognitivist versions, and can be given either a realist or a quasi-realist gloss." My view is that it should be given a cognitivist and realist gloss, but I won't go into that here.

I hope some of this has been helpful, and that I've not trodden on too many toes.

"Good" is an adjective denoting that a thing that is good is a thing that is advantageous and pleasant and helpful and accommodating OR at least three at the same time and in the same respect of the aforementioned qualifiers.

I invite examples that debunk this definition. — god must be atheist

Suppose someone comes up with an example that they claim debunks your definition. How can we tell whether their claim is true? Is the example the standard by which the definition is to be judged, or is the definition the standard by which the example is to be judged?

Determinism trumps rationalism. — Richard B

If determinism trumps rationalism, then any argument that purports to show that determinism trumps rationalism may be invalid; we may only think it's invalid because it is determined that we do so. Thus the position 'determinism trumps rationalism' undermines itself.

Here is Strawson's paper: Galen Strawson: The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility (1994)

↪Sargon summarizes it accurately. Much of the short paper consists of restatements and elaborations (or belaboring) of this thesis. Here is a longer version from the paper:

(1) You do what you do because of the way you are. — SophistiCat

Not if I have free will, because if I have free will, I can do what I do in spite of the way I am. Strawson's initial premise therefore begs the question, and his argument is therefore circular. Why are we wasting our time with this?

For the record, I don't believe in free will, but that's because
a) no-one seems to be able to explain how it works, and
b) the only available options seem to be full determinism, indeterminism, or some mixture of the two, none of which seem to deliver free will, and
c) the only way you can prove you could have acted differently is to have acted differently, which is impossible.