PhilGoetz comments on The Trouble With "Good" - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (131)
To be annoying, "good" does have different uses. The opposite of moral "good" is "evil" the opposite of quality "good" is "poor" and the opposite of correctness "good" is "incorrect". These opposites can all use the word "bad" but they mean completely different things.
If I say murder is bad I mean murder is evil.
If I say that pizza is bad I mean that pizza is of poor quality.
If I say a result was bad I mean that the result was incorrect.
I can not remember if there is a word that splits the moral "good" and quality "good" apart.
This has nothing to do with the majority of your post or the points made another than to say that "Boo, murder!" means something different than "Boo, that pizza!" Trying to lump them all together is certainly plausible, but I think the distinctions are useful. If they only happen to be useful in a framework built on emotivism, fair enough.
He knows that. He's pointing out the flaws with that model.
This is from his article. Speaking for myself, when I use the word "good" I use it in several different ways in much the same way I do when I use the word "right".
I think the point was that we do use the word in multiple ways, but those ways don't feel as different as the separate meanings of "right." The concepts are similar enough that people conflate them. If you never do this, that's awesome, but the post posits that many people do, and I agree with it.