But I wouldn't say the same thing necessarily for evolution. I understand trial and error as intentional activity, and doesn't evolution seem to be a form of trial and error? The reason why trial and error is intentional, is because there has to be some sort of motivation for success, behind the trial — Metaphysician Undercover

So what's the thing with the intention? What's the thing with a motivation? God? Mother Nature? Unless you're arguing for some Higher Power or, again, panpsychism, it doesn't make sense to suggest that there's intention or motivation or purpose in these non-human (or other intelligent being) events.

So, no, it's not a case of trial and error. It's just that things which are less able to survive and reproduce don't, and those more able to survive and reproduce do. That's pretty much a truism.

What could be more question begging than saying the material world acts a certain way because it is the law? — apokrisis

It's not that it acts a certain way because it is the law. It's just that it acts a certain way. It's not a matter of intention or purpose or any other conscious drive. A ball on hill will roll down it. Opposite charges attract. And so on.

So what's the thing with the intention? What's the thing with motivation? God? Mother Nature? Unless you're arguing for some Higher Power or, again, panpsychism, it doesn't make sense to suggest that there's intention or motivation or purpose in these non-human (or other intelligent being) events. — Michael

I'm just stating the reality as I've observed it. So the point in suggesting that there is intention, motivation, or purpose, in these non-human, yet living events, is just to provide an accurate description of what is the case, according to my observations. Whether these observations might lead someone to believe in panpsychism, or a Higher Power, is another thing.

The point though, is that the op is concerned with "the good", and the good is associated with intention. "The good" refers to what is intended, in general, so to determine 'the good" means that we need to determine what intention is, in general. This implies that we need to analyze all instances of intention, to see what they have in common. If you and I can't agree whether something is or is not an instance of intention, how could we ever agree on "the good"?

It is associated with eco-philosophy in my mind, which I suppose fits fairly well with your systems approach. — unenlightened

Yep. Ecological thinking is systems science central. It is synonymous really.

I'm just stating the reality as I've observed it. So the point in suggesting that there is intention, motivation, or purpose, in these non-human, yet living events, is just to provide an accurate description of what is the case, according to my observations. Whether these observations might lead someone to believe in panpsychism, or a Higher Power, is another thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

And I think that seeing motivation and purpose and intention in these (non-human) natural events is as mistaken as seeing Divine intervention in an unexpected medical recovery or ghostly activity in a creaky old house.

If you and I can't agree whether something is or is not an instance of intention, how could we ever agree on "the good"? — Metaphysician Undercover

We probably couldn't ever agree.

Doesn't it follow that 'what is good', is whatever works, whatever is instrumentally effective? There's no real good in the redemptive sense. So the good basically it is still the same kind of 'good' that animals seek. Although animals aren't burdened with the knowledge of their own identity, so it's a bit easier for them.

It's not that it acts a certain way because it is the law. It's just that it acts a certain way. It's not a matter of intention or purpose or any other conscious drive. A ball on hill will roll down it. Opposite charges attract. And so on. — Michael

You're smart enough to know how weak that is.

You object to my imputing intention or purpose to a physically simple level of being. And yet you happily use the notion of "lawful" without apparent definitional discomfort. Then when challenged on this, you change tack to say, well, things "just act in certain ways" - when the point of even invoking laws is that things are found to act in fundamentally general ways.

So the normal language of physicalism is far more question-begging than the jargon of systems science.

You're smart enough to know how weak that is.

You object to my imputing intention or purpose to a physically simple level of being. And yet you happily use the notion of "lawful" without apparent definitional discomfort. — apokrisis

Why would it give discomfort? I'm smart enough to know that the term "law" when used in the context of physics means something very different to the term "law" when used in the context of legislation. A physical law is just a (proposed) description of how things have behaved (and presumably will continue to behave).

Then when challenged on this, you change tack to say, well, things "just act in certain ways" - when the point of even invoking laws is that things are found to act in fundamentally general ways. — apokrisis

I don't really understand this. I wasn't changing tack. I was just clarifying that I wasn't suggesting that the physical laws are some separate thing that the material world subsequently "obeys" (which is what it seemed you thought I meant).

So the normal language of physicalism is far more question-begging than the jargon of systems science.

What question-begging language?

Well it would be quite odd to think of entropy as an intentional act. It seems like the opposite of intentional to me, what happens when intention doesn't intervene. — Metaphysician Undercover

My argument is that all regularity is the product of constraints. So for entropification to "keep happening" there has to be a global prevailing state of constraint.

Now you are picking up on the connotation that intentionality must go with having a choice. You can intend to do one thing and not another. And of course, the Universe in general - in making entropification its general rule or intention - seems to lack this choice-making. It doesn't permit alternatives. And yet that the Universe is organised the way it is must be some kind of choice.

We can imagine that it might have different rules. But then by the same token, if it was in fact free to explore all possible options, we would also it expect to arrive at the optimal choice, the optimal balance, simply by natural selection. Whatever works best - in terms of "being a cosmos" - would be what would have to triumph in the long run.

So given a naturalistic point of view, the Universe is intentional in having made a rather definite choice during its early developmental history. This is what works.

It is not of course a conscious choice. But then consciousness is one of those words we bandy about without any naturalistic definition and so isn't of much help in talking about the natural world.

Doesn't it follow that 'what is good', is whatever works, whatever is instrumentally effective? There's no real good in the redemptive sense. So the good basically it is still the same kind of 'good' that animals seek. Although animals aren't burdened with the knowledge of their own identity, so it's a bit easier for them. — Wayfarer

There are a number of different ways in which "good" is used, related but not the same. Here, the thing which has worked, in the past, is called good, because it produces success. The way I was just using "good" refers to something wanted, intended or desired, this is called the good. The difference is that the way you use it refers to a past thing, while I used it to refer to a future thing.

There are a number of different ways in which "good" is used, related but not the same. — Metaphysician Undercover

So, I would suggest is that an important part of what constitutes 'the good' is the human ability to recognize what is good. Goodness exists on different levels, including that of comfort and safety but in the case of human life, humans are able to recognise and pursue greater goods, like artistic expression and other forms of culture. But when humans reach a certain developmental level, they're able to perceive kinds of goods which their forbears could not. This enables them to discover some idea of real or ultimate purpose, which has formed the basis of the various cultures.

But I think unless human life has an overall sense of purpose then ultimately all goods are social or civic. There is nothing which is intrinsically good, knowledge of which is redemptive. That is the element which is provided by the various religions and spiritual cultures. Traditional ethical philosophies are founded on those intuitions of such higher truths (i.e. vedic, Judeo-Christian, Buddhist, Islamic, and so on.)

Physicalism will identify those kinds of systems with civic and social goods - it will explain them as forms of adaption and socialisation, which exist in order to provide social equity, distribution of power, and so on. So ultimately, what is good in naturalistic or physical systems, is limited to the useful, the well-adapted, those things which serve survival, which is the only real good.

A physical law is just a proposed description of how things have behaved (and presumably will continue to behave). — Michael

So why do inanimate things now "behave". Why do you find yourself continually using psychological terms to describe what you appear to believe are non-psychological causes? When do we get down to your bare naked description of physical causality in such a way we are explaining and not just "describing by psychic analogies we believe to be fundamentally wrong/fundamentally question-begging"?

And once again I have to explain to you how I am a moral anti-realist. There is no "Good", there are only goods spread out across a population and abstracted as a "Good" in virtue of the basic triad. — darthbarracuda

Yet you are committing the "naturalistic fallacy" in claiming that because pleasure is what is, then pleasure is an ought.

And so ethics involves the systematic distribution of care across a population. — darthbarracuda

As I keep saying.

Apo said he recognized pleasure as a mug of beer - but this is a shallow misrepresentation of what pleasure is. — darthbarracuda

Or a sarcastic one.

So like I said, the only thing that makes chocolate and sugar a long-time bad habit is that it will diminish the welfare of the individual. That is invariably what ethics is about: person welfare. Any other conception leads the train off the rails. — darthbarracuda

And so you continue to agree with what you claim to disagree with.

Ethics is about the flourishing of the social group. It is about caring about others in ways that creates reciprocal benefits. And that is a tricky balancing act because - as game theory can spell out mathematically - the "right balance" has to involve the possibility of selfishness too.

We can care about the suffering of others, but then reality has to come into play - rational principles like proximity which you so strenuously want to deny.

It makes more sense for me to care about my immediate family, my immediate community, than to worry about the fate of those so distant as not to have any reciprocal consequences. My starving or sick child has to matter more than some random starving or sick child in Syria or Somalia. So I might give a little money to the Red Cross, but would sell my house to save my child.

So on the one hand, you accept that ethics is about enlightened self-interest - the mutuality and reciprocality that is the definition of social organisation. But on the other, you transmute these rational goods - the secrets of successful organisation - into transcendent goods.

You talk dualistically about biologically-evolved feelings, such as pleasure, pain and empathy, as if they were Platonic abstracta. You treat the qualia as things in themselves - ineffable properties of sentience - rather than biological signals with pragmatic meaning. And in doing this, you ignore all the spatiotemporal complexity of the real world in which social organisation must operate to instead impose a scaleless notion of suffering that floats Platonically above the world we have to describe.

You just ignore proximity arguments, or any kind of complexity really. And you claim to be a moral anti-realist and yet you claim transcendental reality for suffering. Are you starting to see how it doesn't add up?

So why do inanimate things now "behave". Why do you find yourself continually using psychological terms to describe what you appear to believe are non-psychological causes? When do we get down to your bare naked description of physical causality in such a way we are explaining and not just "describing by psychic analogies we believe to be fundamentally wrong/fundamentally question-begging"? — apokrisis

"Behave" isn't a psychological term, so I don't understand this.

"Behave" isn't a psychological term, so I don't understand this. — Michael

Not sure where you get your definitions from. :)

behave
bɪˈheɪv/Submit
verb

1. act or conduct oneself in a specified way, especially towards others.
"he always behaved like a gentleman"
synonyms: conduct oneself, act, acquit oneself, bear oneself, carry oneself; More

2. conduct oneself in accordance with the accepted norms of a society or group.
"‘Just behave, Tom,’ he said"
synonyms: act correctly, act properly, conduct oneself well, act in a polite way, show good manners, mind one's manners, mind one's Ps and Qs;

My argument is that all regularity is the product of constraints. So for entropification to "keep happening" there has to be a global prevailing state of constraint. — apokrisis

But is entropification a real regularity, or is it just a function of the way that human beings interpret the properties of a given object. In other words, to express the existence of an object as energy, is to describe the existence of that object in a very particular way,as the capacity to do work. Are you sure that it's not this particular way of looking at the object, as something which can do work, subject to the constraints of the human laws of physics, which supports the notion of entropification, rather than any natural constraints or regularities? If you describe an object according to what it can do for you, but you don't happen to understand all of the many different things which it can really do for you, then your description is inaccurate. That might be the case in describing the universe as energy.

But when humans reach a certain developmental level, they're able to perceive kinds of goods which their forbears could not. — Wayfarer

This seems to be essential to evolution, moral and social evolution at least. How would you describe this principle of innovation? How do we, as human beings come across new goods? I can see how we might determine a new good as better than an old good, according to some criteria of judgement, increased success, and things like that, but how do we come across these better goods in the first place? What motivates us to seek higher goods?

This enables them to discover some idea of real or ultimate purpose, which has formed the basis of the various cultures. — Wayfarer

How would this "ideal or ultimate purpose" be defined? If it is good that human beings continually seek higher goods, in order to find new goods better than the old goods of their forebears, wouldn't the notion of an ideal, or ultimate good, kind of put an end to the seeking of higher goods, by capping it with a highest good? Is there really an ideal, or ultimate good?

I don't see what's psychological about that. Psychological stuff is all in the head, right, not publicly observable. Another explanation (from Google's define:behaviour) includes "the way in which a machine or natural phenomenon works or functions.".

Another explanation (from Google's define:behaviour) includes "the way in which a machine or natural phenomenon works or functions.". — Michael

So you are denying that the primary definition is about intentional action within a social context context?

The fact that you complain when I use psychological-sounding concepts, then use them yourself without even admitting that is what you are doing, shows you really aren't willing to think this through.

Get back to me when you can account for physical events without talking about the forces that particles feel, or the laws they obey. Demonstrate that there is a fully un-psychological language available to us.

How would this "ideal or ultimate purpose" be defined? — Metaphysician Undiscovered

That is the subject of the whole field of ethical philosophy. Suffice to say that 'pleasure = good, pain = bad' is insufficient in my view, because it's reductionist. But then again, so is neo-Darwinism.

@Michael - have a look at this essay on the 'concept of laws'.

But is entropification a real regularity, or is it just a function of the way that human beings interpret the properties of a given object. — Metaphysician Undercover

I wouldn't get too hung up on what entropy "actually is". Like the notions of force or energy before it, the more we can construct a useful system of measuring reality, the further away from any concrete notion of reality we are going to get. In modelling, our analytic signs of reality replace the reality we thought we believed in - our synthetic intuitions due to psychological "direct experience".

So you either go with Kant and Peirce here, or you don't. And entropy thinking is way of conceiving of reality that is demonstrably more general or abstracted, less particular and concrete, than what it replaces. In the end, we only know that it pragmatically works.

The question is, what are one's grounds for defining the good?

Aristotle mostly reported what like-minded people regarded as virtues, looked at how we govern ourselves using the virtues, rolled 'em up into eudaimonia, and then explained how to educate ourselves to achieve such ways.

The virtue theory still seems the most attractive to me. It accepts the individualism of our moral quest, and balances it against what people think and what the polis, society as a whole, will benefit from.

I agree with apo's eco-outlook but from a different base altogether. I think naturalism as a basis for ethics is a metaphor/analogy which has a sort of virtue theory lurking in it; that naturalism in itself implies nothing in the way of the good, because nature did not originally have anything in mind.

I can't be doing with rules, whether Kant's super-logical principle, or consequentialism/utilitarianism (as I've said before, we don't know the consequences till we've acted, so I think again we're smuggling in virtues/vices in disguise).

And I can't be doing with gods...and...

Well, that's me.

Yet you are committing the "naturalistic fallacy" in claiming that because pleasure is what is, then pleasure is an ought. — apokrisis

No, I'm not, because pleasure is inherently valuable to whoever is experiencing it. Like I said in the OP, humans are value machines. They create value.

Or a sarcastic one. — apokrisis

Sarcasm is not wanted, sorry. It's useless.

Ethics is about the flourishing of the social group. It is about caring about others in ways that creates reciprocal benefits. And that is a tricky balancing act because - as game theory can spell out mathematically - the "right balance" has to involve the possibility of selfishness too. — apokrisis

But we must make sure that we focus on the constituents of the social group, not the social group as an object itself.

We can care about the suffering of others, but then reality has to come into play - rational principles like proximity which you so strenuously want to deny. — apokrisis

Because they aren't supported by the triad I just presented. They are particular and when universalized become arbitrary.

So on the one hand, you accept that ethics is about enlightened self-interest - the mutuality and reciprocality that is the definition of social organisation. But on the other, you transmute these rational goods - the secrets of successful organisation - into transcendent goods. — apokrisis

No, it is not enlightened self-interest. I don't help people because they will help me. I help people because that's what they need. The "Platinum Rule" - i.e. do not harm others and do not manipulate others. Self-interest has no play here, only in practicality.

You talk dualistically about biologically-evolved feelings, such as pleasure, pain and empathy, as if they were Platonic abstracta. You treat the qualia as things in themselves - ineffable properties of sentience - rather than biological signals with pragmatic meaning. And in doing this, you ignore all the spatiotemporal complexity of the real world in which social organisation must operate to instead impose a scaleless notion of suffering that floats Platonically above the world we have to describe. — apokrisis

And in doing this you ignore that pleasure, pain, and empathy are immediately accessible - you reduce them away and pretend they don't exist.

humans are value machines. They create value. — DarthBarracuda

That is a very unfortunate analogy. Humans are not machines, and besides, which machines 'create value'?

Yeah, she says "I take it that this much is essential: Laws of Nature are prescriptive, not merely descriptive, and – even stronger – they are supposed to be responsible for what occurs in Nature." That's not how I understand them, and so it's certainly not what I meant when I mentioned them.

I agree with apo's eco-outlook but from a different base altogether. I think naturalism as a basis for ethics is a metaphor/analogy which has a sort of virtue theory lurking in it; that naturalism in itself implies nothing in the way of the good, because nature did not originally have anything in mind. — mcdoodle

But then if you don't accept that our biology and sociology expresses natural principles, then that seems to leave you with only the options that either whatever we do (biologically and socially) is thus arbitrary - it lacks any rational support - or that this support must come from some other (transcendent) source.

So we are back to creating gods, Platonic goods, or whatever.

If you want to reject my naturalism, you have to be able to point to the alternative basis you would then embrace. Otherwise that rejection is simply in bad faith.

Note that my naturalism is explicit in spelling out the role of individual spontaneity and creativity. It is part of the dynamic that there is a fostering of individual competition within the globally co-operative social context.

A society wants to produce the right kind of people. And automatons aren't that useful it turns out.

So you are denying that the primary definition is about intentional action within a social context context?

The fact that you complain when I use psychological-sounding concepts, then use them yourself without even admitting that is what you are doing, shows you really aren't willing to think this through.

Get back to me when you can account for physical events without talking about the forces that particles feel, or the laws they obey. Demonstrate that there is a fully un-psychological language available to us. — apokrisis

I don't get what you're trying to say here. I casually remarked at the beginning that the word "intention" is misleading giving that it implies conscious decision, and so you clarified that you didn't mean it in this sense but in the sense of "propensity" and so I then addressed your clarified meaning and questioned how this relates to morality. I didn't push you on the primary meaning of "intention" implying conscious decision. So why can't you afford me the same understanding and accept that I didn't mean the word "behaviour" in a sense that implied conscious decision?

The main point I was making is that just as a ball's propensity to roll down a hill can't tell us what's good for the ball, why would our propensity with respect to entropy tell us what's good for us?

The main point I was making is that just as a ball's propensity to roll down a hill can't tell us what's good for the ball, why would our propensity with respect to entropy tell us what's good for us? — Michael

I had already explained that in posts at the start of the thread and then re-explained it to you - and you continue to talk past that. To repeat once more....

When you follow the story of thermodynamics through to the level of complexity represented by a social system, you can see that its fundamental dissipative dynamic can best be described in terms of competition and cooperation. And thus you can see why a basic moral precept, like "do unto others as you would have them do unto you", makes natural sense. It encodes a natural organising balance.

So we are back to creating gods, Platonic goods, or whatever. — Apokrisis

The alternative is, we reach a stage where the transcendent is discovered or realised. So it is not 'a creation' any more than the law of identity is 'a creation'; when the mind evolves to the point where it can understand symbolic abstraction then it can recognise such things as the law of identity. But the basis of that didn't come into existence through evolution - what came into existence was the capacity to recognise it.

For you the 'final cause' appears to be 'dissipation' - things exist only to dissipate energy, or return to a state of maximum entropy. From my perspective, that seems like nihilism. Perhaps you might explain where I'm misunderstanding this?

I wouldn't get too hung up on what entropy "actually is". Like the notions of force or energy before it, the more we can construct a useful system of measuring reality, the further away from any concrete notion of reality we are going to get. In modelling, our analytic signs of reality replace the reality we thought we believed in - our synthetic intuitions due to psychological "direct experience". — apokrisis

Well, I think there is a problem here, because "good" is qualitative, and we cannot measure any quality unless we know what it actually is that we are measuring. Otherwise, it's like comparing apples and oranges. We could attempt to measure the sweetness, or the bitterness of each, and compare them but unless we have clearly defined parameters as to what constitutes "sweet", and what constitutes "bitter", our comparisons would be pointless. And, if we established some guidelines, such as X measurement equals sweet, how is this an objective determination as to what is actually sweet? This would be an arbitrary designation. So, with respect to "entropy", how do you propose that we measure this if we do not know what it actually is?

No, I'm not, because pleasure is inherently valuable to whoever is experiencing it. Like I said in the OP, humans are value machines. They create value. — darthbarracuda

That's the naturalistic fallacy. Just because pleasure is what a machine creates as its value, doesn't mean that pleasure is transcendentally good.

Of course, you are now using language more like my own - a mechanistic naturalism - and so that reveals the fallacy of the naturalistic fallacy. It is a view of nature which presumes transcendent causes and so there is always something floating off into the distance as "not part of the material system".

Just switch from talking about pleasure as qualia and start talking about it as a biological sign - a semiotic mechanism - and you will have arrived at my kind of pan-semiotic naturalism.

But we must make sure that we focus on the constituents of the social group, not the social group as an object itself. — darthbarracuda

No. We must focus on both by focusing on the mutuality of their relationship.

In systems theory, parts construct the whole and the whole shapes its (re)constructing parts. So the focus is on the primary dynamic that drives the self-organisation.

Sorry, but it is a fundmentally complex model of causality. And one has to focus on the irreduciably triadic nature of that holism.

No, it is not enlightened self-interest. I don't help people because they will help me. I help people because that's what they need. — darthbarracuda

So there is no payback at all?

The "Platinum Rule" - i.e. do not harm others and do not manipulate others. — darthbarracuda

This sounds rather disengaged from life. But how do you define harm and manipulation? Are you going to recognise grades and distinctions? Or as usual, are you treating them as qualitative absolutes?

If we are standing in a queue, and I am behind you with the need to get to the front, are you going to "harm" me by not stepping aside? Are you going to "manipulate" me by keeping your back firmly turned and ignoring my plight?

So sure, normal society puts bounds on individuals and their needs for the collective good. And that defines things like harm or manipulation in grounded practical fashion. You know what to do in that regard by becoming a properly engaged member of that society.

But again we are back to your kind of unplaced and scaleless view of morality where there is none of the relativity that comes from relating. The "good" congeals into a mentalistic and immutable substance. It is not the kind of adaptive dynamical principle that lies at the heart of my naturalism.

And in doing this you ignore that pleasure, pain, and empathy are immediately accessible - you reduce them away and pretend they don't exist. — darthbarracuda

I say they don't "exist" in the way you presume they exist - as dualistic substance.

Instead they are part of a dynamical system of sign and interpretance. There is stability in the development of a hierarchy of interpretive habits, and yet still plasticity in a capacity for novelty and experiment within that system of established constraints.

So in this process view, you get both persistence due to habits, and adaptivity due to spontaneity, co-existing in the same world.

In your actually reductionist view of ontology, you can never get these to complementary aspects of being in the same room. In reducing reality to material being, you create the eternal mystery of the mentalistic.

For example, you have to introduce the homuncular self that experience its experiences. Pleasure, pain and empathy now become qualia - substantial "mental" properties. And you even start appealing to "me" as a fellow homunculus doing the same thing.

It's a familar way of reducing reality - to matter and mind. But we all know that it doesn't work out in the end. Dualism is good for a while, but in the long-run, it is a philosophical blind alley.