Topics Ethics

Question Doesn't moral goodness depend on our definition of moral goodness? For example, if we define "Good are those actions which upholds God's will, as in the Bible", our moral views are likely to be very different to those of people who define good as "Those actions which help, and do not hinder, others in achieving their own peaceful ends". Yet how can we arbitrate between different definitions of the good? There are actions which uphold God's will, as presented in the Bible, and there are actions which help, and do not hinder, others in achieving their own peaceful ends, so how do we decide which of these groups of actions gets the label "good"?

Accepted:
March 2, 2011

Comments

This is a BIG question! Some skeptics, like J.L. Mackie, will deny that there is any real. objective thing in the world that matches up to "moral goodness." He might say that all we have are definitions, such as the ones you offer, each of which happens to be in error. But probably a majority of philosophers today (or a great deal of them) adopt some form of moral realism, according to which some acts are truly morally good (seeking compassion and peace, to use your example) and some are truly morally bad (torturing the innocent). I assume, too, that your two cases of the Bible-based morality and the compassion-peace morality are going to have some serious overlap. In other words, there are lots of precepts in the Bible urging us to be compassionate and seek peace, and I imagine that someone who seeks compassion and peace probably will be opent to respecting religious teachings that uge us to "help, and do not hinder, others in achieving their own peaceful ends." I suspect that answering your question will involve distinguishing levels of philosophy or judgment. On the basic level, there are questions of which acts are morally good and bad. But then there is a further level in which we ask what is it that accounts for such goodness or badness or what is our theory about goodness or badness. So, on the basic level, there might be wide agreement about moral goodness. Both the religious believer and skeptic may all agree murder and rape are bad, helping the vulnerable and seeking justice is good. It is just that on the next level, the "believer" thinks that the ultimate grounding of goodness lies in the good Creator, whereas the "skeptic" may seek the ultimate grounding of goodness in human nature or she might even treat values as basic and not further explainable (e.g. a Platonist takes such a view). And of course one can combine these. So, a theist might claim that goodness is grounded both in human nature as well as in the divine nature.

I hope this helps, but it is only a start!