Q&A: Good and Bad in a Factual World
Good and Bad in a Factual World
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I was thinking about something and wanted to hear your opinion.
I understand that there is a fallacy in deriving an ought from an is. I wanted to know whether it makes sense to extend this beyond moral judgments about what “ought to be done,” and apply it to judgments in general about a situation—whether it is good or bad, negative or positive (not negative or positive in the sense of factually true or false, but negative in the sense of “I don’t want this” and positive in the sense of “I do want this”). In a factual, materialistic world there is no room for any kind of positive or negative attitude toward reality. The only thing that should be, if anything, is acceptance of what happens to me. The very fact that I feel a “good” or “not good” feeling toward things in reality is already a kind of judgment (which is not always under my control) about reality, but that too cannot arise from factual reality as such, and so it is surprising in itself even before moral value judgments about “what ought to be done or be.” In other words, any attitude I have toward reality—even a simple emotion like joy or sadness—already expresses something beyond the facts of reality and cannot be explained by them alone. That is, one can say that thought x is correct or mistaken if it corresponds to reality or not. But one cannot say that something is good or not; and not only would that statement be mistaken, but any feeling at all toward reality would be “mistaken”—or more accurately, unnecessary. Does that seem right to you?
Answer
No. That is indeed true regarding every judgment, but what you described are not judgments but feelings. Feelings are facts like any other fact. The fact that something feels good to me (= pleasant to me) or bad to me (= I am suffering) is a fact that follows from how I am built. A judgment is not a fact.
Discussion on Answer
1. We’re going in circles. The fact that I want something because it is pleasant to me is a fact. Not a judgment and not a norm.
2. The fact that animals have an instinct is supposed to be more convincing than a human instinct? Why? Instincts can be the product of some arbitrary internal wiring.
As for instincts—I didn’t say it is more convincing than in humans. I said it seems to be on the biological level and not caused as a result of “habit.” After all, I assume animals don’t think about it and try to create laws out of “habit.” If so, doesn’t that prove that this is not just “habit” but something that it is possible to rely on at the physical level?
No. It may be built into them for some reason, and there is no guarantee whatsoever that it is correct.
What does arbitrary internal wiring mean? It developed evolutionarily—what is the meaning of the word arbitrary? If it developed that way, that means there is truth in it.
Absolutely not true. Why would the fact that something developed mean that it is true? Fear of the night also developed, and also the desire to speak malicious gossip. So is that true? As I already wrote, this developed in humans too, and I do not see any difference.
Useful, not necessarily true. So that means it has a basis in reality and is not arbitrary. The need to speak malicious gossip did not develop out of nothing. Maybe we won’t agree with it, but it did develop for certain reasons.
Fine, I explained what I had to explain. This seems to me like mere stubbornness. All the best.
Okay.
1) A feeling is something like a judgment. That is, my subjective state in relation to the factual situation. To say that I feel good about a situation is like saying that I am interested in that situation. And about that one can ask: why? You are not supposed to have any attitude toward the situation. The feeling is a kind of judgment (though not a value judgment) toward the situation—whether I desire it or not. This is somewhat like the question of why I should have subjective feelings at all if in any case I am just a machine. In other words, the basic assumption in the question says that a subjective feeling toward a particular situation is purposeless if the goal is simply to respond to the situation. From this it follows that if I have a “feeling” toward the situation, even if you don’t call it a “judgment,” it is something that should not exist on a plane of facts alone.
2) Skepticism of the day: I’m currently reading “Truth and Not Stable.” Regarding Hume’s question—I understand the question. You wrote that Hume says causality comes from our habit. But that there is no reason to rely on it. However, in Pavlov’s experiments you can see that conditioning exists in animals too—that is, causality: if food came until now, then apparently it will come next time too. Doesn’t that prove that there is reason to rely on causality, because it is biologically built into us, just as we see it in animals?