Happiness in itself cannot be good. It depends on the consequences, and causes. If eating orphans makes you happy, then that is wrong. If happiness is drug induced, then it is shallow. One can say that "happiness is always good" only in a hedonic, shallow sense that it is always pleasurable, or feels good. Not that it is always good regardless of cause or effect, because that clearly isn't so. One doesn't do bad things even if they make you happy, nor refrain from good things, even if they don't. — Wosret

What you're saying, I think, is that there's something wrong with saying that a bad or wrong action can have a good component. I can't see anything wrong with this. Actions and situations are complex, and their complexity makes them philosophically opaque. I think it is philosophically imperative to analyse them into their consitituent parts in order to make them less opaque and more understandable. We do this as a matter of course in many situations. For example, if the dentist hurts you but makes your tooth better, we are quite willing to say that the pain is bad but the overall result is good. This is decomposing a complex into its parts. I think that's all I'm suggesting we do. The happiness got from eating orphans is good, but is outweighed by the bad effects of eating orphans (the orphans die). The happiness got from drugs is good, but is outweighed by the effects of taking drugs (your life falls apart and your family suffer).

I thought that I showed that it clearly doesn't follow that commending something implies any active involvement at all. — Wosret

Well, I don't think you have.

Suppose we try it from the opposite direction. Suppose someone said to you, 'Something very bad is going to happen, and I can prevent it, but I don't feel any obligation to do so.' Wouldn't you think there was something illogical about this? I think there is, and I think this shows that badness is morally compelling.

I think you could take up one of three positions about this, which are:
1. There is no moral obligation to prevent bad things where we can.
2. There is a moral obligation to prevent bad things where we can, but not to promote good things where we can.
3. There is a moral obligation both to prevent bad things where we can and promote good things where we can.

If yoiu agree with this analysis, which do you support? I support 3.

I still don't understand why an obligation to oneself isn't as significant, and can be waived by one to someone else can't be. I mean, clearly physically, and behaviorally they both can be waived. — Wosret

They can be waived, but not by the person obligated if the obligation is to someone else. If you don't accept that then I don't know what further I can say. To me it seems obvious. Imagine telling someone 'I know I borrowed this money from you, but I'm waiving my obligation to you so I don't have to pay it back'? What do you think they would say?

If indulging in fantasies about immoral sexual acts would make it more likely that one would commit those acts, then I would say that it is immoral to indulge in the fantasies. It would be like an alcoholic buying a bottle of booze and taking it home; he would be more likely to drink booze if there was booze in the house than if there wasn't.

So let's say there are two types of people; people who can indulge in fantasies about immoral sexual acts without this making it more likely that they would commit them, and people who can't. Then the problem is: can you be sure you know which type you are, given that none of us is an unbiased observer of ourselves?

No it isnt that some unhealth states involve happiness, its that excessive happiness itself generates them, and if this itself is possible then happiness isnt paramount. — Wosret

I didn't say happiness was paramount, I said it was good. I accept that in some cases it may not be paramount. My argument doesn't need it to be. Even if excessive happiness does cause these things, that doesn't mean happiness itself is not good, nor does it mean that there aren't cases of simple happiness where there are no negating factors.

You need to do more than assert the oughts and ought nots. Give reasons. — Wosret

I don't just assert. I introduced 'ought' in step 3, where I stated that it was illogical to commend something and then not actively try to bring it about if you are able to. If you're not in a position to do something to bring it about, then of course there is no obligation on you to do so, which covers your point about commending "qualities, skills, appearances, activities in others". In most such cases you will not be in a position to do more than commend those people, but in cases where you are, it would be illogical not to do more.

There is a conceptual line between fact and value. I cross this line in step 1, by claiming that happiness (fact) is good (value). By the time we get to step 3 and introduce 'ought', it's already too late to object. IMO, even 'good' is morally compelling.

Thats how debts work that others have to me, which isnt the same thing as an obligation to oneself. — Wosret

The only difference I can see between a debt or obligation to oneself and a debt or obligation to someone else is that one can waive the first but not the second. What other difference is there?

1 is false, mania is excessive happiness, and causes impulsiveness, and reduced quality. Bi-polar is the only mental illness actually correlated with creativity, because one is super productive during manic periods, but destructive, separating the wheat from the chafe during depressive periods. Same with taking a lot of sweet drugs, one is extra creative, but destroyer of worlds on the down turn. One feels much much better than the other, but that has little to do with how good they are. Excess in either direction, or one without the other is unhealthy. — Wosret

Your implied argument is:
There are unhealthy conditions which involve happiness.
Therefore happiness is not good.

Not a valid argument. The happiness part of these conditions is still good, it's just outweighed by the other parts.

3. No necessarily true, I can commend qualities, skills, appearances, activities in others without then feeling it necessary to get myself involved with their being brought about. — Wosret

If you could help, you ought to. If you would hinder, you ought not.

4 is a nonsequitur, from 3. Need something more than that, without spiraling into an absurdly full schedule. — Wosret

By 'an absurdly full schedule' I take it you mean that you want to keep some time for yourself? That's quite natural, but it isn't a reply to the argument.

5 Why is waiving obligations work like that? — Wosret

If X owes you money, you can say to X 'that's okay, don't bother to pay it', and that lets X off paying it. If anyone but you says to X 'that's okay, don't bother paying Wosret', it doesn't let X off. That's just how obligations work.

I think 6 follows from 5, 7 follows from 6 and 8 from 7.

Why shouldn't I just take everything I want from everyone in every moment? — Wosret

I'll offer you an argument.

1) Happiness is good, unhappiness is bad. (proved by the fact that everyone wants happiness and no-one wants unhappiness)
2) What is good is commendable. (because to say that something is good is to commend it)
3) If something is commendable, we ought to do our best to bring it about. (because merely to commend something and not try to bring it about would be illogical)
4) Therefore we have an obligation to try to make people happy.
5) One can waive an obligation to oneself, but it is logically impossible to waive an obligation to someone else.
6) Therefore the obligation to make oneself happy can be waived, but the obligation to make others happy cannot.
7) Therefore one is more obligated to try to make other people happy than to make oneself happy.
8) Therefore, rather than taking everything one wants from other people, one ought to put the happiness of others before one's own happiness.

I should mention, in case anyone is wondering, that for the whole of my 65 years I have consistently failed to get anywhere near this high standard, and I confidently expect this to continue.

It seems you're not making much effort to come to terms with my position, only to disagree with it. — bloodninja

You mean I am disagreeing for the sake of it? That's pretty insulting, and not true. I disagree with you because I think you are wrong.

I'm not saying that the hammer lacks any physical properties, only that the being, or the hammer-ness of the hammer, is not its physical properties. — bloodninja

The being of the hammer and its hammerness are not the same thing. Its being is as a physical object. Its hammerness, by contrast, consists in its being thought of and used by us as a hammer.

Moreover, its being is not some mysterious property added onto it extrinsically. — bloodninja

I haven't said that it is. Its being, which is physical, is not added to it, it is intrinsic. It's its being a hammer that is added to it (by us) and which is extrinsic.

The being of the hammer, as ready to hand equipment, is always already determined by the referential whole (the world). — bloodninja

You have it backwards. The being of the hammer is as a physical object, not as equipment.

The key point, however, is that this kind of being is not a property, as hard as that might be to understand. — bloodninja

Being a hammer is a property. As I have said, it is an extrinsic property. The hammer's being a hammer is not the same as its mere being. Its mere being is the same as its existence, and there is no agreement among philosophers as to whether existence is a property.

To summarise my position:
1. The being of the hammer, its existence, is as a physical object. It has physical properties which are intrinsic to it.
2. The hammerness of the hammer, its being a hammer as opposed to its merely being, is an extrinsic property which is added to the hammer by us.

If I understand you correctly, there's no difference between

1. God that exists in imagination
And
2. God that exists in imagination AND the real world

Why do you say that?
— TheMadFool

I'm saying that the God you imagine in 1 is identical to the super-God you imagine in 4. In both cases you imagine a thing to really exist. — Michael

This is why you need to not use the term "greatest being" and instead spell out the relevant properties. It makes things much clearer. What are the properties of the greatest being imaginable? — Michael

I think I can produce a version of the ontological argument that avoids both of these objections, viz:

Premise 1: A being that is beneficent and exists is more beneficent than a being that does not exist.
Inference 1: If God does not exist, he is not the most beneficent being possible.
Premise 2: God is the most beneficent being possible.
Conclusion: God exists.

Notes:
Premise 1 is supposed to be obviously true, on the grounds that a being that does not exist would have zero beneficence (i.e. would do no good at all).
Inference 1 supposedly follows from premise 1.
Premise 2 is supposedly true by definition.
The conclusion follows from inference 1 plus premise 2.

I would be interested to hear other people's views on this. Personally I would claim that the argument fails because premise 1 is false. The reason I think it is false is that Premise 1 is equivalent to this:

A being that does not exist is less beneficent than a being that is beneficent and exists.

and this is false. It is false because a being that does not exist is the same thing as nothing, and 'less beneficent than a being that is beneficent and exists' is a property, and nothing cannot have properties.

If I am right about this, then I think it shows that there must be an error in any version of the ontological argument in which a comparison is made between a God who exists and a God who is effectively nothing. The God who is effectively nothing may be described in the argument as being imaginary, or existing only in the mind, or whatever, but these descriptions are merely alternative ways of saying that in place of an existent God, there is nothing. So all such versions of the argument effectively depend on attributing a property to nothing, and since nothing cannot have properties, they must all fail.

Comments, anyone?

Numbers themselves are not properties
— Herg

Really? What then of the distinction quality vs quantity? — TheMadFool

Number is not the same as quantity. The number 3 is not the same as 3 OF something.

For instance, red is a certain wavelength of light. — TheMadFool

No it isn’t. Red is a colour. There is a wavelength of light that, when viewed by humans with normal vision, causes them to see the colour red, but that is not the same as red being that wavelength.

Here you seem to be making an implicitly metaphysical claim that the physical stuff the hammer is made out of is actually real, and therefore, because it’s actually real, the dog can actually play with it. — bloodninja

The fact that dogs can play with hammers does not imply that they are real. Dogs can play with hammers in cartoons, and no-one would think that dogs and hammers in cartoons are real. I will, however, concede that in using the term ‘object’ without making it clear that I mean ‘physical object’, since ‘object’ is frequently understood in philosophy to imply independent existence I may have seemed to be making a claim for reality of the hammer. This was not my intention.

Please note that, for the dog, the hammer is neither ontologically ready-to-hand equipment nor an ontologically present-at-hand object. I think it’s safe to say that dogs aren’t ontological, and for that reason the dog has no understanding of the being of the hammer as either a hammer or an object. For the dog it is a curious play-thing. Therefore that the dog can play with the hammer does not prove that the hammer is also an object. Ontologically speaking, the dog is just irrelevant. — bloodninja

You begin here by saying that the dog has no ontological view of the hammer (which I will agree to), but then you allow that to the dog the hammer is a play-thing. Obviously you do not mean to imply that the dog THINKS of the hammer as a play-thing – it just plays with it – but even so, your position is untenable, because if the dog is able to play with the hammer but does not view the hammer AS anything, this can only be by virtue of the hammer possessing some properties that are not conferred on the hammer by its being viewed AS something, but are actually intrinsic to the hammer. These are the hammer’s physical properties – its length, breadth, mass, shape, molecular constitution, and so on. These intrinsic physical properties constitute the hammer as a physical object.

The hammer driving in the nail in wood in order to..., the door knob you don't notice but that you nevertheless turn to open the door in order to enter the room in order to..., the keyboard beneath your fingers that you type on in order to express the meaning of the sentence in order to..., the sidewalk at your feet while rushing to the train in order to not be late to work... have in the first instance the intelligibility of readiness-to-hand, there is no awareness of anything like an object. — bloodninja

Untrue. I can pick up a hammer, knowing it to be a hammer, and also being aware AT EXACTLY THE SAME TIME of its size and shape and appearance, which are its properties as a physical object.

Moreover, properties do not belong to the ready-to-hand. Properties only belong to present-at-hand ontology. — bloodninja

Everything that exists necessarily has properties, irrespective of whether it features in anyone’s ontology or not. Are you seriously going to claim that the hammer does not have such properties as length, breadth and mass?

It may be, of course, that you think hammers do not really exist, in which case your position is idealist. Are you in fact an idealist?

I think that it's astonishing that anyone thinks that they're in a position to judge the creator of the fucking universe. — Wosret

Your sentence implies the following argument:

X created the universe.
Therefore I should not judge X.

Clearly not a valid argument.

The hammer is not an object, it is equipment. — bloodninja

It’s both. The fact that it’s used as equipment does not prevent it being an object. If it were not an object, my dog could not sniff it, pick it up in his mouth, or anything else he might do with it. The hammer is not equipment as far as my dog is concerned, so if it were only equipment and not an object, he would not be able to interact with it at all, which clearly he can.

As such it belongs to a different ontological order than the subject/object (or mental/physical) ontology that this discussion has been grounded in. — bloodninja

Disagree. The ontological order of a thing is the kind of existence we understand it to have, and the kind of existence we (most of us, anyway!) understand the hammer to have is as a physical object. The use of an object (e.g. as a hammer) is not an ontic or even ontological property; it’s an epistemic property – the hammer’s being a hammer is a matter of us knowing that it is a hammer (or, more correctly, knowing of it as a hammer), not of its being in itself a hammer.

What you are calling the hammer’s extrinsic properties (when looked at as a deworlded thing, i.e. not as a hammer) are in fact its primordial, background relationships and uses as equipment and as a hammer. — bloodninja

Both are true. Extrinsic properties are a general type of properties, and use as equipment is a subtype within that general type.

When I needed to nail a pailing on the rails I didn't have to look for a physical object that resembled the intrinsic properties of a hammer and then mysteriously project mental thoughts onto it about the extrinsic ways I could use the physical object to get the job done. I never once explicitly though about the hammer, only about the task to be done. This is because we are primordially in the world encountering equipment as equipment and only later experience ourselves as deworlded subjects abstractly thinking about objects and properties and whether hammers exist and what nothing is. — bloodninja

At no point have I suggested that we have to look for an object with certain intrinsic properties before we use it. Actually it’s the reverse; we look for an object with a certain extrinsic property – something with some such property as ‘usable for hammering things in with’ – and only sometimes do we then notice its intrinsic properties: for example, the hammer may have a loose head (intrinsic); but even then we would be more interested in the extrinsic properties than the intrinsic (is it too loose to do its job? – extrinsic). Nor am I suggesting that in using a hammer we need to EXPLICITLY or ABSTRACTLY think about the hammer; we just need to think about it enough to select it for the job of hammering.

If all the humans in the world suddenly vanished, so that there was no-one who could think of a hammer as being a hammer, the hammer itself would be completely unchanged.
— Herg

The material stuff the hammer is made out of would be unchanged, I don't disagree with that. However there would be no hammer. Because hammer-ness, as such, depends on humans existingly making hammers intelligible; not by thinking, but by using, and using in order to fulfill appropriate tasks in appropriate ways. — bloodninja

Since you prefer ‘using‘ to ‘thinking of’, I will rephrase, though it makes no significant difference.

‘There would be no hammer’ is badly phrased. It sounds as if the object has ceased to exist, but that is not so; all that has happened is that no-one is now using the object as a hammer. Rather than saying ‘there would be no hammer’, therefore, you should say ‘no-one would be using this object as a hammer’.

Let’s get technical. The object that we use as a hammer is physical, and being physical is an intrinsic property of the object, i.e. a property that the object has in and of itself. Being used as a hammer, by contrast, is an extrinsic property, i.e. a property arising from the object’s interaction with the rest of the world (or some part of it). This extrinsic property consists in a relation in which the object stands to ourselves (the relation of being used by us as a hammer). When I said ‘the hammer itself would be completely unchanged’, I meant in respect of its intrinsic properties, including the property of being physical. Only its extrinsic properties would have changed.

I’m agnostic about an afterlife, and as a result my feelings about death are very variable, because I simply don’t know whether anything comes afterwards or what it will be like if it does. In some moods I fear not existing (which when you think about it makes no sense at all), in other moods I fear being disembodied for eternity (a far worse prospect – how would I communicate with anyone? I would probably go insane), in yet other moods I think how amazing it would be to meet up with all the dead people I have known and loved (I was actually at a funeral today of a very dear friend who died in August of cancer at the age of only 46), and in yet other moods I simply tell myself to stop thinking about things I can’t change and get on with life. This last mood is really the only sensible one.

But if there is life after death, then an entirely new perspective is available. It becomes possible, based on works or faith in this life to spend eternity in heaven, hell, or to be reincarnated as some believe. So the real question that remains is, what if the idea of no life after death is wrong? What could happen then? Does one truly want to remain in ignorance by not thinking about it until it is too late to pick a new course? — Lone Wolf

I don’t want to remain in ignorance, but I see no choice in the matter, because I just don’t believe the evidence is there. I certainly don’t want to spend my remaining time (I’m 65) in a probably fruitless search. I’ve got better things to do.

Best way to face death – call a friend, make a coffee, read a good book, go for a walk in the sun or the rain, play with the dog. The best way to face death is just to get on with living. That's what I try to do, and I'm successful 99% of the time. Of course, it helps that at 65 I'm still pretty healthy. When I'm 75 or 85 I may be singing a different song.

A hammer is neither a physical phenomenon nor a mental phenomenon. Sure it is made from physical stuff but it's being as equipment, in other worlds its intelligibility, is only possible upon a background of shared practices. This background is neither mental nor physical. To reduce it to either would be to completely misunderstand the phenomenon. — bloodninja

A hammer is a physical object. The fact that we think of a hammer as a tool has no effect on the hammer, it’s a physical object whether we think of it that way or not. If all the humans in the world suddenly vanished, so that there was no-one who could think of a hammer as being a hammer, the hammer itself would be completely unchanged. Our thoughts about objects and our uses of objects do not make the objects anything other than what they are. What you call the hammer’s “intelligibility” is not part of the hammer, it is part of our thinking of and use of the hammer.

So, there's no such thing as a quantitative property. Humans walking on 2 legs and dogs on 4 don't assist in distinguishing the two? — TheMadFool

Certainly there are quantitative properties. A 2-legged man has the quantitative property of having 2 legs, while a legless man has the quantitative property of having zero legs. But the number itself, 0 or 2, is not the property; the property is not 0 or 2, it is having 0 legs or having 2 legs. Numbers themselves are not properties.

What is NOTHING ( N )?

Definitions:
1. Google: not anything
2. Merriam-Webster: nonexistence

Do the two definitions concur? — TheMadFool

Yes. “Not anything” means the absence of all things that could exist. (And also, to be exhaustive, of all things that could not exist, but of course they are absent by necessity.) “Nonexistence” means nothing existing. They mean the same. And they are both correct.

Only things that could exist could instantiate properties (if and when they exist), so if all things that could exist are absent, no properties can be instantiated. So nothing cannot have properties. If we think we have found a property of nothing, we have gone wrong somewhere. Probably what has happened is that we have chosen words to describe a state of affairs that misdescribe it; there will always be a way of describing the state of affairs in which the supposed property of nothing disappears.

N is neither mental nor physical. It can't be a thought and neither is it a physical object. — TheMadFool

No indeed. Being mental or physical are ways of existing, and as such are arguably not properties (since existence is generally held not to be a property). Nevertheless, only something that could exist could exist in a certain way, and so nothing, which is the absence of all things that could exist, could not exist in any way at all, and so cannot be either mental or physical.

Therefore, the two general responses to ''what is N?'' viz
1. N is empty space
2. N is a concept
are just an analogy or plain wrong. — TheMadFool

Agreed.

N, being nonexistence, shouldn't have properties. If we divide possible properties into two - qualitative and quantitative - then it's quite obvious N can't have qualitative properties like color, shape, texture, sound, etc. but, surprisingly, N is, quantitatively, zero. In other words, N has the quantitative property of zero - there's no thing in N i.e. the number of things in N is zero. — TheMadFool

Zero is not a property. Rather, it is an alternative to saying ‘nothing’, e.g.:

How many objects are in the box? Zero.
What is in the box? Nothing.

N forms boundaries. For instance, what is both a cat and a dog? Nothing! This forms a clear cut boundary between the categories cat and dog. — TheMadFool

In this and the remarks that follow it, you are actually talking about the concept of N, not about N. If we say ‘Nothing is both a cat and a dog’, we are using the concept of nothing to express the fact that in our domain of discourse, everything is either wholly cat or wholly dog. So insofar as there is a property of usefulness here, it is the concept of N that has the property, not N itself.

When we talk of properties of physical objects, we consider their quantitative aspect too. We say ''5 bananas'', ''2 cars'', etc. These numbers, as relates to objects, are the quantitative properties of things.

Similarly, when we quantify NOTHING, we do so with the number zero. Zero is the quantitative property of NOTHING just like 5 is the quantitative property of your right/left hand. — TheMadFool

Numbers are not properties of things, at any rate not in the way you suggest. The property your hand possesses is not fiveness, but five-fingeredness. Similarly, in a bunch of 5 bananas, the bunch itself does not possess the property of fiveness, but the property of five-banananess. As for each individual finger or banana, insofar as it possesses any quantitative or numerical property, it possesses the property of oneness; and it seems to true but trivial that all objects whatsoever must exhibit this property.