Vichara 5: A simple property of the universe
We, however, are more woke to the possibilities of reality at its fullest...
We shall now look into what it is that comes across to us as (being of) ultimate, objective value. This post and the next one will look at two preliminary, non-definitive properties about it that will help us pin down what it exactly is in the dispatches beginning with Vichara 7.
The property we will look at today is that it is not possible to pin down exactly what it is.
I know, I know. It's complicated. We can say things about it that are (hopefully) truthful, but its true essence cannot be put in words. The map is not the territory; all models are wrong. Ideas or concepts are but maps or models, and as such, ideas are always wrong.1 That which they refer to can only be known, truly known, in experience. Indeed, Truth is solely a phenomenon of experience.2
Now, about value: The central point I have to make about it today is borrowed entirely from the early twentieth century British philosopher G.E. Moore. In his Principia Ethica (1903), Moore tries to set ethics right, as it were, from the confusion that had, according to him, hitherto plagued it. For him, ethics was simply the branch of knowledge that is about what is good,3 i.e., about specifying for what possible x's the statement "x is good" is valid. To do so, however, one needs to most fundamentally define what that predicate "good" itself is (which is, of course, also the purpose of this project).
Moore astutely recognized that it is impossible to define "good". In pointing this out, he was dispensing with dominant theories of value of his day, which posited that, for example, "Good is the desired", or "Good is pleasure". He saw, correctly, that these definitions aren't valid. Look at it yourself. Reflect on either of those propositions. As you do so, you will find that when you consider the subject of those propositions ("Good"), what you think of isn't the same as when you think of the the predicates ("the desired" or "pleasure"). Your state of mind when you contemplate on "pleasure" is one way, and your state of mind when you contemplate on "good" is another way. So it doesn't do to define good through such predicates; they are simply not equivalent to "good", as our very reflection on such propositions shows. Moore makes this point also through his "open question argument”, which some find a very compelling way to frame it: Consider that it's meaningful to ask a question such as "Is pleasure good?" Since that is meaningful, i.e., non-tautological, it suggests that "pleasure" and "good" aren't the same thing. This can be underscored by seeing how, for analytic concepts, i.e. things that can be breaking them down into simpler parts, such questions would be meaningless, such as asking "Is the bachelor unmarried?"
As Moore pointed out, only analytic concepts can be defined or explained at their essence. A bachelor, for example, can be analyzed, or broken down, into concepts (“unmarried” and “man”) that unpack its structure and its function, which can be understood independently of "bachelor".
Good, however, in his memorable analogy, was more like the color yellow—a simple property of the universe. "Yellow" cannot be explained to someone who doesn't know what it is. It can definitely be explained in terms of its electromagnetic properties, but obviously, when we say "yellow", we don't mean the electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength between between 570 and 590 nanometers. If someone has never seen the color yellow, and if we tell them about its waveform, we haven't really helped in the slightest, because when we say "yellow", we mean, well, yellow, the color yellow that we know as the color yellow. It cannot be broken down or further analyzed into constituent parts or properties; it is just there, a simple property or being of reality.
Same it is for good.4 Good isn't the same as anything it could maybe apply as a predicate to. Something may be good, say, Michelangelo’s David, or the election results, but that doesn't mean that "good" = David or the election results, just as daffodils being (of the color) yellow doesn't mean that yellow is daffodils. Good is irreducible and self-contained. You just gotta know it to know it. And, it turns out, you do know it, by the very essence of what makes you what you are, as we'll see later. The fact that when you are posed a question such as "Is pleasure good?" your mind regards the "pleasure" and "good" as distinct things underscores the point we were beating in the last few weeks, which is that we have a distinct experience of something that is specifically the Good; there are certain entities that we believe should exist for their own sake for that very self-contained property.
So, as far as our inquiry into figuring out goodness goes, we can say this to start with: The experience we have of what we consider to be true goodness is of the simple, distinct thing that is goodness. This may seem like we're setting off, in our attempts at specification, on the worst possible foot. It isn't so, however. In Moore's system, this fact about the Good hasn't much import, but despite my agreement with Moore on this matter, the framework being built here diverges from his views in significant ways. One of those is that much as yellow can be specified in terms of its electromagnetic characteristics, I think value can be specified in terms of certain metaphysical characteristics. Given his modish aversion to metaphysics and unsurprising but total rejection of any metaphysics that borders on the spiritual or religious, Moore would not even entertain such a possibility, which is likely why he didn't think seriously about ways in which there could be a metaphysical basis for explaining intrinsic value.
We, however, are more woke to the possibilities of reality at its fullest. This will aid us as we see how we can, even if not explain what goodness is to an entity lacking the configuration to access it, explain at least the criteria for when, or with what possible co-occurent indicators at the metaphysical level, there is objective good. Such formalization, need it even be said, could be of no less than epochal significance for giving both direction and a concrete basis for deciding—designing, building and governing—what society should be about.
As stated so bluntly by the poet William Bronk.
An obvious point to the East, yet profound if not perplexing to the West, and certainly anathema to the Western philosopher who believes that a proposition itself could have the property of truth. We will thus be unpacking this proposition in another dispatch.
I diverge from him on this, as will be seen in the weeks ahead, as well on many other things.
For the sake of precision, though, I should mention that for Moore, based on his way of understanding these terms, it's "good" that is simple and definable, whereas, given the way he framed the following term, "the good" can be defined; the latter is how I’m talking about what we’re talking about.