PhilGoetz comments on The Trouble With "Good" - Less Wrong

83 Post author: Yvain 17 April 2009 02:07AM

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Comment author: MrHen 17 April 2009 07:15:33PM *  0 points [-]

An average person may have beliefs like "pizza is good, but seafood is bad", "Israel is good, but Palestine is bad" [...] Some of these seem to be moral beliefs, others seem to be factual beliefs, and others seem to be personal preferences. But we are happy using the word "good" for all of them, and it doesn't feel like we're using the same word in several different ways, the way it does when we use "right" to mean both "correct" and "opposite of left".

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.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 17 April 2009 07:31:19PM 1 point [-]

To be annoying, but "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.

He knows that. He's pointing out the flaws with that model.

Comment author: MrHen 17 April 2009 09:32:47PM 1 point [-]

But we are happy using the word "good" for all of them, and it doesn't feel like we're using the same word in several different ways, the way it does when we use "right" to mean both "correct" and "opposite of left". It feels like they're all just the same thing.

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".

Comment author: Relsqui 04 October 2010 03:14:35AM 0 points [-]

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.