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.

Walmart and the North Pole both really exist
— Herg
But how do you know that The North Pole really exists? — RussellA

I don't. I was taking a bet. The odds of me winning are proportional to the amount of evidence I have that the North Pole exists. The odds of me losing are proportional to the amount of evidence I have that it doesn't. I think my bet is fairly safe, but nothing is guaranteed.

My mistake was duplication: I shouldn't have used both 'fictitious' and 'supposed'.
— Herg

Ok, but now you've done it again, with 'real' and 'existent'. — bongo fury

Nope. I know you'd like to nail words like 'real', 'entity' and 'existent' to the world we live in, so that they can't be applied to fictional or imagined objects, but it can't be done. Any word at all can be used of either real or imaginary objects. Any concept instantiated in the real world can be imagined to be instantiated in this world or some merely imagined world. 'Real' does not always mean actually real; 'existent' does not always mean actually existent. That's just the way things are.

Since all of these people are imaginary, they cannot be either really separate or really identical.
— Herg

At last one of those in that list was a real man. :wink: — Tom Storm

I'd forgotten that there was a real St Nicholas. He can't either be identical to, or work with, three imaginary people, because a real object and an imaginary object can't have relations with each other — neither real relations nor imaginary relations. However, an imaginary St Nick — who is an analogue, in a context of supposition, of the real St Nick — can be identical to these other three people in Shawn's context of supposition, and can be separate from them and work with them in yours.

'Fictitious supposed entity' does not accurately capture my meaning.
— Herg

Ok, what does? What form of words is satisfactorily not an oxymoron? — bongo fury

I know you claimed that 'fictional entity' is an oxymoron. I don't agree. It would be an oxymoron if calling something an entity implied that it was real, but it doesn't, because you can refer to something as an entity in a work of fiction. (There's a Star Trek episode in which there's something called the Crystalline Entity. It isn't real.) Calling something an entity does not amount a claim of real existence, only of existence in either the real world or a context of supposition. My mistake was duplication: I shouldn't have used both 'fictitious' and 'supposed'.

Santa is a person that ascribes a jolly old man over at the North Pole. He is known by two names, both "Santa Claus" and "St. Nicholas".
— Shawn

No. This is where it gets complicated. Can you demonstrate that Santa Clause is identical with those others? I would suggest to you that Santa Clause, St Nick, Kris Kringle and Father Christmas are four separate figures who work together over Christmas. — Tom Storm

Since all of these people are imaginary, they cannot be either really separate or really identical. (Imaginary objects cannot have real properties.) @Shawn imagines them as identical, you imagine them as separate. Therefore in his context of supposition they are identical, in yours they are separate. End of story.

points out that we merely suppose that there is someone called Santa who lives at the North Pole.
— Herg

How is this different from saying that we merely entertain the fiction? — bongo fury

It doesn't differ in any important way. I think the reason Griffin talks about 'contexts of supposition' rather than 'fictions', is that there can be other contexts of supposition than those created by writing fiction. For example, if kids play at cowboys and Indians (though I guess they don't do that anymore), this play creates a context of supposition in which they are, indeed, cowboys and Indians.

A fictitious supposed entity
— Herg

You might as well say, a fictitious fictitious entity. — bongo fury

Mea culpa. 'Fictitious supposed entity' does not accurately capture my meaning. A fictitious entity is a supposed entity. As you imply, a fictitious supposed entity would be an entity that is merely supposed to exist by people who are themselves fictitious. I apologise for my terminological inexactitude.

Soo, when we talk about God, or Allah, are those supposed entities or do they just have a historical background? — Shawn

I'm not sure what dichotomy you're setting up here. By 'have a historical background', are you suggesting that they may be based on something that once really existed? Anyway, all gods are merely supposed entities, until it is shown otherwise, if that answers your question.

Are you noticing that the lines are getting blurry when thinking about stipulating existence to supposed entities? — Shawn

No. Real entities have real existence. Supposed entities only have a supposed existence (that is, we only suppose that there are such entities and that they exist.). If someone wrote a scientific paper claiming that Santa existed in the real world, that would be claiming real existence for him. But if someone wrote a story in which a scientist went to the North Pole and found Santa, and said, 'Wow, Santa really exists,' Santa in the story would not have real existence, he would only have a supposed existence, like everything else in the story. There is real existence, and there are supposed existences which are analogues of real existence, just as there are real objects, and supposed objects which are either analogues of real objects such as the North Pole with Santa living in it) or are supposed objects with no real analogue (such as Santa himself).

The North Pole in the context of supposition is not the actual North Pole — actual entities can't exist in contexts of supposition — but a fictitious analogue of it.
— Herg

This seems incoherent. We can't assume that Santa lives in his "own" North Pole, while the "true case" of the actual North Pole not having Santa Claus over there. — Shawn

That Santa lives only in a fictitious or supposed or imaginary North Pole isn't an assumption, it's a necessity. Being imaginary, he can't live anywhere else.

I think that as long as we are careful not to mix the real with the supposed or fictitious, there's no problem.
— Herg

But, this happens all the time. We don't distinguish for children that Santa lives over at Walmart or at the North Pole. It's all ad hoc here. — Shawn

I don't think I really understand your point. What you describe doesn't sound to me like the kind of mixing I had in mind. When I spoke of mixing, I was referring to the mistake made by some philosophers (e.g. Meinong) of thinking that merely supposed objects can have real properties (such as existence). This sort of mixing is a category mistake.

Walmart and the North Pole both really exist, and if you wrote stories about Santa living in Walmart, that wouldn't be the real Walmart, because the real Walmart doesn't have Santa living in it; it would be a fictitious analogue of the real Walmart, having only a supposed existence, an existence only in the context of supposition created by the story. But if I've misunderstood your point, please explain further.

To suppose Santa's existence is to ontologically ascribe him to the domain of discourse based of of his fiction as an entity. Yet, a fictitious entity is an oxymoron, so how is that so? — Shawn

A fictitious supposed entity is not an oxymoron. We suppose that there is such an entity, when in fact there is not.

In this particular 'context of supposition' (to use Griffin's own term), both Santa and the North Pole exist, and so does the relation between them 'Santa lives at the North Pole.'
— Herg

I'm not sure if this is some sort of category error. The North Pole actually obtains in the real world; but, Santa over at the North Pole, does not. How is that so? — Shawn

Apologies, I should have been clearer. The North Pole in the context of supposition is not the actual North Pole — actual entities can't exist in contexts of supposition — but a fictitious analogue of it.

I think that as long as we are careful not to mix the real with the supposed or fictitious, there's no problem. If we mix them, unsolvable puzzles ensue, but they are puzzles of our own making. "We have first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see.”

It's funny to see that the central question of the title stated hasn't been addressed. Here it goes again with a little more,

In what sense does Santa Claus or even - Pegasus exist? — Shawn

Nicholas Griffin, in an essay in 'Russell vs. Meinong: One Hundred Years after ""On Denoting"' https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19960205-russell-vs-meinong), points out that we merely suppose that there is someone called Santa who lives at the North Pole. In this particular 'context of supposition' (to use Griffin's own term), both Santa and the North Pole exist, and so does the relation between them 'Santa lives at the North Pole.' Outside this context of supposition, in the real world, the North Pole exists, but Santa does not, and nor does the relation 'Santa lives at the North Pole.'

Works for me. :)

The closest any system (that I know of) gets to claiming moral axioms is hedonism. In it, good feelings are good, bad feelings are bad. But they're wrong: they're merely things that evolution created to help us survive. They are not actually inherently good or bad, despite Hedonism's claims — Leftist

When you say good feelings are not inherently good, I assume you mean something different by the first 'good' and the second 'good'; otherwise your statement appears self-contradictory. Since you mention hedonism, I assume that by 'good feelings', you mean pleasant feelings. (Tell me if I'm wrong.) So I assume you mean this:
'Pleasant feelings are not inherently good, they're merely things evolution has created to help us to survive.'

Why can't they be both?

You say confidently that pleasant feelings (or some kind of feelings) 'are not inherently good'. Can you define what you mean by this second 'good'? (If you can't, how do you know what you're saying?)

I would suggest that this second 'good' means something like 'warrants a favourable response'. So if I say 'that's a good painting', I mean something like 'that painting warrants a favourable response'. It's like I'm praising the painting, but not just that, I'm also saying that the painting deserves or warrants that praise. (When people say some X is good, they do think they are saying something about X, not just about their own feelings.)

And then I would suggest that pleasant experiences do warrant a favourable response. (Favourable responses could include approval, praise, actual seeking out, etc.) The evidence for this does indeed come from evolution. Why are the kinds of behaviour that make it more likely that an animal will pass on its genes — behaviour like eating healthy food and having sex — pleasant? Obviously, because the pleasure motivates the animals to behave in that way. (Animals that found eating healthy food or having sex unpleasant didn't do it, and so didn't pass on the genes that made them feel like that.) But why does this work? Why does making something pleasant motivate animals to do it? Obviously, because pleasure is worth seeking out; it warrants a favourable response. (We know that anyway, from our own experience of pleasure.) But I just suggested that 'warrants a favourable response' is just what 'good' means. So if I'm right, it follows both that pleasant feelings have been created by evolution to help us survive, and also that they are good.

From the article you linked to:

'Libet, however, didn’t see his results as a total refutation of free will. He instead pointed out that during the 500 milliseconds leading up to an action the conscious mind could choose to reject that action. While impulses would be dictated by the subconscious, the conscious mind would still have the capacity to suppress or veto them; something that most people would say they do everyday. This model has been referred to as “free won’t”.'

This looks dodgy. Libet seems to be assuming that the conscious mind can veto a subconscious action almost instantaneously. But a conscious veto must itself require a buildup of electrical potential, which must also take time. And in fact for this veto to permit free will, it would have to start AFTER the conscious mind understands what the action is that it is vetoing. So we would need:

1. Brain starts to build electrical potential for a subconscious action AND for a conscious awareness of that action.
2. Conscious awareness of the subconscious action occurs.
3. Brain starts to build electrical potential for a conscious veto.
4. Conscious veto occurs.

Can all this really fit within Libet's 500 milliseconds?

For what it's worth, I don't believe in free will, for the same reasons that I don't believe in God or an afterlife, i.e.:
1. There's no evidence for it.
2. We have no idea how it could work.
3. We don't need it to explain anything that happens.

This really is no fun. I'm out of here.

*sigh*

there is nothing to prevent God being both imaginary and self-contradictory.
— Herg

If god is self-contradictory then god renders himself unavailable for discussion.

(p & ~p)⊃q

If god is self-contradicting, anything follows, and so anythign can be asserted. Conversation ends; truth becomes falsehood.

Hence, if you assert that god is, and is self-contradictory, you are not worth talking to. — Banno

I don't assert that God is. 'God is imaginary' means the same as 'there is no God'. So any assertion about an imaginary God is talk about nothing, and it doesn't matter what it asserts.

↪Herg
Q; Why do we have anaesthetics?
A: Because pain is bad. Everyone knows this, except a handful of subjectivist philosophers.
— Herg

You are committing the naturalistic fallacy. The word 'is' in 'Because pain is bad' is ambiguous. It could mean that pain and badness are one and the same. That would be the 'is' of identity. Or it could mean that pain 'has' badness (in the way that 'ice cream is cold' doesn't mean ice cream and coldness are identical, but that ice cream has coldness as a property).

Now, what the naturalist does is thinks "oo, pain is bad" - which is (normally) correct, if the 'is' in that sentence is the is of predication. Normally pain does indeed have badness. But then they conclude that pain 'is' bad as in 'pain and badness are one and the same. And that's to commit the naturalistic fallacy - to equivocate over the 'is' of identity and the 'is' of predication.

That doesn't by itself establish that pain and badness are distinct, it is just a fallacious way of arriving at a conclusion. — Bartricks

Another straw man. I don't hold that pain and badness are identical. When I said 'pain is bad', I meant that pain (or, more precisely, the unpleasantness of pain) has the property of being bad. My ethical naturalism is not founded on an equivocation over 'is', it's founded on the fact that pleasantness and unpleasantness of experience to some degree dictate our evaluations, so that the evaluations are not entirely subjective. If you read the three syllogisms I posted earlier, you will see that.

Are pain and badness one and the same? No, for if they were then it would be impossible for there to be pain that is not bad. — Bartricks

I haven't said that pain and badness are one and the same.

Yet sometimes pain is not bad, for instance when it is deserved. — Bartricks

When it is deserved, it is deserved precisely because it is bad. That's the whole point of retributive punishment - it repays bad with bad. More precisely, it repays intrinsic badness with intrinsic badness which, because it is (considered to be) deserved, is (considered to be) instrumentally good. Rehabilitative or reformatory punishment, by contrast, generally repays intrinsic bad with treatment which is both intrinsically good and (intended to be) instrumentally good.

Furthermore, for something to be 'bad' is for it to be disvaluable. — Bartricks

I agree with this, but it isn't very helpful. All it says is that for an object to be bad is for it to have negative value. What it doesn't say is why any object would have negative value. My theory explains this: an object has negative value if it influences us to value it negatively; unpleasantness of experience influences us to value the experience negatively; and thus an unpleasant experience has the property of badness.

So, for pain to be bad is for pain to be disvalued. — Bartricks

I disagree with this. It's inconsistent with your assertion in the previous sentence: "for something to be 'bad' is for it to be disvaluable" means that the badness consists in the object having the property of negative value, whereas "for pain to be bad is for pain to be disvalued" means that the badness consists in the object being valued negatively. Roughly speaking, the first is objectivist, the second subjectivist.

But pain could not itself 'be' the badness, because that would require that pain disvalue itself. — Bartricks

Once again, I haven't said that the pain is the badness.

Which is insane as pain is a mental state and is not in the business of valuing or disvaluing things. — Bartricks

And I never said it was.

So, anyway, you're wrong. Subjectivism is true, albeit divine subjectivism. — Bartricks

Theism intruding into ethics? Dear me.

↪Herg

Who is issuing the prescription?
— Bartricks

Nature.
— Herg

Oh, so you're mad. Nature issues prescriptions. I see. Stones speak to you do they? What are the molecules telling you to do today? — Bartricks

I have on my shelves this book (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13624497-ethical-naturalism) which contains essays by thirteen present-day ethical naturalists. Twelve of them are university professors, one is a fellow. Which is more likely: that these thirteen professional philosophers are all mad, or that you don't understand ethical naturalism?

There is more to nature than stones and molecules.

It would be so nice if people here would talk about philosophy. Fights between teenage girls I can find down the pub.

For what it's worth, I think the flaw in Anselm's argument is simply this: it relies on the fact that if we say that God is only imaginary and not real, this leads to a contradiction; but what is not often noticed is that imaginary objects can embody contradictions (e.g. the square that is also not a square is an imaginary object), and so there is nothing to prevent God being both imaginary and self-contradictory.

The concept of God is a being in which none greater can be conceived. — 3017amen

Greater in what way? Since you (and Anselm) don't say in what way, should we assume in every way possible? If so, that would include greater in height, greater in ability to eat pies in a pie-eating contest, greater in armpit smelliness, and a whole lot of other greaters.

Since anyone can conceive or comprehend, a priori, that particular definition standard, one can conceive of a God.

Well, yes. My concept of God now is of a very tall dude who can eat more pies than anyone else and has smellier armpits than anyone else. I often wondered what God was like. Thank you for clarifying that for me.

Q; Why do we have anaesthetics?
A: Because pain is bad. Everyone knows this, except a handful of subjectivist philosophers.

Who is issuing the prescription? — Bartricks

Nature.

↪Herg How am I begging the question against the naturalist? The naturalist identifies moral properties - such as rightness and goodness - with natural features, yes? — Bartricks

Yes.

But for an act to be right is for it 'to be done'. That is, there is a prescription enjoining us to do it. How does a natural feature issue a prescription?

My argument explains that.

And for something to be morally good is for it to be morally valuable. How does a natural feature value anything?

I'm not claiming that it does. You're confusing the action of valuing a thing with a thing having value.

Here are two statements:

"Xing is wrong"
"Xing has natural feature P"

They are very different. Both are descriptions, but the first describes a prescription, whereas the second does not.

True.

So they are not equivalent.

True.

Yet naturalism turns all moral statements into statements of the second kind.

False. Naturalism asserts that they are already statements of both kinds. 'We ought not to inflict pain' = 'there is an obligation not to inflict pain', and this is both descriptive and prescriptive.

↪Herg
The point of my first syllogism is to show that there are values built into nature.
— Herg

So you think the mindless natural world values things? — Bartricks

Again, I didn't say that.

I value things. You value things. My chair doesn't. That rock over there doesn't.

True, but again, not what I said.

And does 'nature' issue prescriptions as well?

And again.

This is the stuff of madness.

No, this is your collection of straw men.

Your first argument does no such thing, incidentally. It's first premise is ambiguous between a substantial moral claim and a claim about how people use a word (that is, you want both to say how the word 'appropriate' is used, and help yourself to actual appropriateness).

It's not ambiguous. You are begging the question against ethical naturalism. The point of the first premise is to point out that a value claim can also be a claim about natural properties. Your characterisation of that as 'ambiguous' rests entirely on your own tacit assumption that this cannot occur. But it does.

EIther way it doesn't show that 'values' are built into nature.

It shows that nature sometimes dictates what our values are to be.

Oh, in that case your argument is unsound, as premise 1 is obviously false. "That's morally bad" does not mean "a lot of people use the word 'inappropriate' to refer to it". — Bartricks

No, it doesn't. But that isn't what I said. Please try to answer what I actually write, instead of changing it to something else and than answering that.

However, actual infinity is highly controversial.

Actual infinities don't exist. — TheMadFool

If they are controversial, how are you justified in asserting, without supporting reasoning, that they don't exist? Or, conversely, if they don't exist, how can they be controversial?

But only minds can issue prescriptions or value anything. — Bartricks

The point of my first syllogism is to show that there are values built into nature. It just is the case that, for example, if you have a pain, you want the pain to stop. The negative value you place on the pain does not originate in your mind, it is imposed on your mind by the demands of the pain.

Your argument presupposes moral truths and so doesn't tell us whether morality is objective or subjective. — Bartricks

Where exactly do I presuppose a moral truth?

Premise 1 in your first argument helps itself to appropriateness.

Aa I say, it's a thesis about how 'bad' is actually used. I don't think that's helping myself, I think I'm just reporting a fact about language use.

But to say it is appropriate to have this or that feeling is to say it is right to feel it.

That's similar to my premise 1, but IMO not as plausible; and you don't provide any grounds for believing this.

Is killing a small child wrong? — Tom Storm

If the child is expected to have a happy life, then by killing it, since happiness is a good, you're expecting to replace net good with nothing, which is a bad thing to do. OTOH, if the child is expected to have a miserable life, then you're expecting to replace net bad with nothing, which is a good thing to do. However, in practice it is very hard to be sure what the future happiness of a child will be, so this simple calculation usually can't be made.

When one can't do the proper calculation, one has to fall back on rules of thumb. A good rule of thumb is that people, even children, usually have a much better idea of whether their lives are happy or miserable than other people do, which suggests that it would be better to leave the decision whether to stay alive to the person themselves. Another good rule of thumb is that a child is not yet a properly formed human being, so it would be a good idea to let it grow up and find out how happy it was. Another good rule of thumb is that if we once allow child-killing, it could get out of hand (children can be very annoying).

I'm going to say that for all these reasons, in practice, killing a small child is almost always wrong.

So your moral system starts with suppositions that empiricism is true and you can use language to arrive at meaning and a moral system. — Tom Storm

No, none of that. Making use of empirical observation does not commit one to empiricism. And although I do believe that I "can use language to arrive at meaning and a moral system," this is not a supposition, because I have good reason to believe it.

Can you do it in a few dot points?

Is there a moral system that doesn't start with a supposition - whether it be religious or secular? — Tom Storm

My moral system starts with two things: an empirical observation, and a thesis about the meaning of words. So yes, there is.

I'll explain my moral system to you if you like, but you won't agree with it. No-one ever does.

But I do think that as our language evolved it was heavily influenced by the absolute and objective sense of moral values (and to a lesser extent an egoistic sense of aesthetic values) imposed by religious authority and thus retains a theocentric syntactic structure of the vast majority of time that our language's has undergone it's development. It is reflective of a time when divine command was the objective truth and fact of moral value. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Even if our belief that morality is objective was caused by our or our ancestors' belief that objective moral truths came from God, that does not prove that there are no objective moral truths. We're doing philosophy here, not anthropology or sociology.

What pops into my head are commands like "shut the door!", "put down the gun!", etc. Commands, according to a book on logic that I read some suns ago, aren't propositions and so, can't be true or false. Divine Command Theory? — TheMadFool

'Hitler was a bad man' is not a command, divine or otherwise.

All I can say with any degree of confidence is that morality may not be truth-apt, the fact that they're expressed in propositional form may just be a linguistic accident or perhaps is done out of necessity. — TheMadFool

'Hitler was a bad man' is a true proposition. (He killed 6 million Jews, remember? This is not about a linguistic accident.) The challenge is to explain how it can be true. A good place to start would be to work out what property is referred to by the word 'bad'.

6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. — TLP

By definition, nothing lies outside the world.

In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no
value exists--and if it did exist, it would have no value.

Begging the question.

If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what
happens and is the case.

Ditto. Also 'value that does have value' is meaningless.

For all that happens and is the case is accidental.

No, most of it is at least partly deterministic.

What makes it non-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental.

No, for the reason just given.

It must lie outside the world.

And again, there is nothing outside the world.

6.42 So too it is impossible for there to be propositions of ethics.

'Hitler was a bad man' is a proposition of ethics.

Propositions can express nothing that is higher.

'Higher' is meaningless.

6.421 It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words.

See the above proposition about Hitler.

[quoyte] Ethics is transcendental.[/quote]
'Transcendental' refers to nothing and is therefore meaningless.

(Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.)

No, aesthetics is about beauty, which does not come into ethics.

Dear Herr Wittgenstein, we have read with interest your Ethics examination paper, but we feel you have not yet mastered the basics of the subject. Since you seem to prefer talking pretentious and inflated nonsense to logical argument, we suggest you enrol for the priesthood. Yours faithfully, The Examiners.