Response to @baerdric: There Can Be No Good
I am going to follow up on an excellent article @baerdric posted last week. I will attempt to summarize his argument about the existence of (or lack thereof) “Good”
There Can Be No Good
Here’s the basics, and keep me honest if I miss the mark:
If Good does exist, we would be able to remove good until we have bad.
What actually happens when we remove good is a neutral state.
Therefore you cannot remove Good to get Bad
If Good does exist, we would be able to add something to increase good
There is no good to be added that is always good independent of circumstance.
Therefore, Good is not something that can be increased by adding more good.
We can increase bad by adding something to a neutral state.
As we decrease bad, we build a positive state.
Therefore, what we call “Good” is actually the removal of bad.
There is no intrinsic Good.
To get the full effect of this argument, you’ll need to check out the original post here: https://steemit.com/philosophy/@baerdric/there-can-be-no-good
There Can Be No Bad
While discussing this point with @baerdric, I suggested that perhaps this same line of argument could be used to claim that there can be no bad. His suggestion is that Harm is something that can be added to any system and it increases bad and reduces good. I posit that there is not a definition of harm that shows the existence of bad.
Let us try the most obvious definition of harm: that which causes physical or psychological pain. Someone who punches me in the face surely causes harm, and has disturbed my existence in a way that is unpleasant to me. Is this bad? It depends. Was I assaulting someone else when I was punched or was it unjustified? Did I enter into a consensual boxing match or was I simply assaulted? Perhaps I requested a punching out of a personal fetish. The Harm in this situation is just the harm, it cannot be said to be intrinsically bad.
Are harsh words that cause psychological harm bad? Again, it depends. Is this schoolyard bullying or mutual hazing? Is it abuse from a parent? Did I agree to be roasted on stage? The words are just words and cannot be said to be inherently bad.
What about theft and invasion of privacy? I would argue that these forms of harm cannot be said to be intrinsically bad until the whole circumstance is considered. For example, if I steal five bucks from Elon Musk I cannot be said to have caused any harm. If I invade the privacy of someone conspiring to harm others in order to stop him/her, I have netted less harm than had I not invaded privacy.
So what?
If I parallel the logic @baerdric uses to dismiss Good, I can also dismiss Bad. This is not an attempt to argue for the good, rather it is an observation of an interesting extension of this logic. We end at value judgements as “relative”. That’s right, “It’s all relative” for the win!
I appreciate the challenge. It makes me think and refine my ideas
I think your use of "the neutral state" is off the mark. I used "the rest state" which is still a little off, "base state" might be good. Perhaps the best term for what I want is "zero". Harm can be reduced to zero, leaving what we call good. Your sentence "His suggestion is that Harm is something that can be added to any system and it increases bad and reduces good." is only wrong in that I do not say you can reduce good. Good is just what we call a low level of harm.
Your example of using harm to prevent greater harm shows that harm is a real thing that can be used. I cannot find a good thing like that which can be actively used.
I think to refute my premise, you must show that there is a force of good which can be added to any situation (making it "more good"), and whose removal automatically leaves bad in its wake. Like the impossible Flashdark, which shines a ray of darkness into a sunny room, you need a thing that is as real as harm, which you can walk into a room and do to someone, which adds to the good, and without which they automatically revert to a natural base state of Bad.
I expect people to say that "Love" is that thing, that you can walk into a room and love someone, and if you didn't do that, they would be automatically in a state of bad. I kind of hope someone brings that up, because, of course, I have already prepared an answer for that.
Fortunately I am not trying to refute your premise ;) Rather, I am attempting to show that bad is as illusory as good. I see your perspective that harm is measurable in the sense of you can correlate some level of pain and/or suffering whether or not there is a long term net of increased harm.
I would say, what is the difference in harm as a measure of pain/disturbance that increases and decreases (more or less bad) VS benefit as a measure of pleasure/satisfaction that increases and decreases (more or less good).
For example: I could give someone a hug which brings an increase in feelings of contentedness and joy that has nothing to do with fending off harm (here's your love example!). I could say kind words to a stranger to increase their enjoyment of their day. I could mentor someone in a field I have mastered for no other reason than to increase their actualization.
Again, this is not to say Good is more real than Bad. rather, they are equally slippery concepts that exist in a practical sense for our day to day lives but do not correlate to anything concretely real.