What Is Good? The First Definition and the Socratic Question of Cause vs. Effect

Orientation #

He says “we’ve heard before” that the good is what all desire, and promises that “maybe next time” he will read a bit of the opening of the Nicomachean Ethics, where Aristotle does this by induction. Verified sources place the class at p. 2 of his handout “A Note on Practical Philosophy” (about three minutes read from it) and p. 1071 of DHB Vol III; he ends by sending the class to “page fifteen” after the break. The next class takes up the cause/effect question left open here and argues it inductively.

The class, in order #

1. How we begin answering “what is it?” (“more apt to begin by giving examples”) #

Point: when asked what something is, people (especially the young and inexperienced) begin with examples, not a universal definition; this is Plato’s picture of how human knowing begins.

• Plato’s dialogues (dialogue = Greek for conversation) mostly ask what something is: Meno, what is virtue; Euthyphro, what is piety; Theaetetus, what is epistēmē (knowledge); Laches, what is courage. The man asked usually answers with examples.
• Little Johnny at the table asked “what is a nose?”: “that’s a nose, that’s a nose,” pointing; likewise “this is a chair.” Asked what an animal is: dog, cat, horse. What is water: the faucet, the lake, the rain.
• Why examples first? Two reasons he gives:
  1. we proceed from the confused and less known to the distinct and more known;
  2. more basic: the first road of knowledge is from the senses into reason, and the senses know only singulars, which are only examples of the universal.

2. Examples of good vs. the one definition (“I asked you for one thing”) #

Point: an American boy asked “what is good?” says candy, pizza, then baseball, bicycles, vacation; Socrates stops him: “I asked you for one thing, and you gave me many.”

• Aside: a Greek proverb about breaking a dish while handing it over (“I asked you for one dish, not many”).
• The most obvious difference: examples are many, perhaps endless; the definition is one (or at least one complete definition). But they are connected: the one definition brings together what is common to the examples.
• Aristotle, Posterior Analytics II: one road to a definition starts from examples, comparing them, separating out the common and leaving aside differences.
• Bravery worked as a model: the girl who swam into shark-infested water in California to pull in the young man whose leg was bitten; the soldier who charges the enemy; the fireman who runs into the collapsing building for the baby. Common element: each goes toward something that could end his life, and for a good reason (save the man, the baby, defend the country). Boundary cases: the foolhardy man risks his life for no good reason; the coward will not risk it even for a good reason.

3. What the boy’s goods have in common: the first definition (“all the things that he wants, he calls good”) #

Point: candy, pizza, bicycle, vacation differ in taste, kind, even category; what he recognizes in all of them is that he wants them. A student proposes “pleasing to the senses”; he generalizes to “things he wants.”

• Meno’s definition of virtue, “the desire for good things and the ability to achieve them,” sounds high-class, but Socrates asks whether desiring good things separates the virtuous from the vicious man: the bank robber wants something good for himself too. Meno must admit everybody wants good things for himself, so that does not separate good man from bad, and he sees no way out.
• His son Paul, as a small child at dinner (“this is a good dinner, Mama” / “this is awful”): “if we want it, we call it good; if we don’t want it, it’s bad.” That is the first notion.
• “Unless you become again like a little child, you can’t enter the kingdom of heaven” (our Lord); he says the like holds for philosophy: the child begins where we all originally began, with what is more known to us, not with what a college teacher said or a book.
• The first definition of good: the good is what all desire, or in native English, the good is what all want.
• Aristotle begins the Nicomachean Ethics by a kind of induction: every art, science, choice and action aims at some good; hence the good is what all desire. He will read this “maybe next time”; for now the class develops it on its own.

4. The Euthyphro question: cause or effect (“is it pious because the gods approve of it”) #

Point: in the dialogue after the Meno, Socrates teaches a basic kind of question, a question of before and after in the sense of cause and effect.

• Euthyphro, after examples, defines the pious as what the gods approve of / are pleased with. Socrates: is it pious because the gods approve of it, or do the gods approve of it because it is pious? Restated: is the gods’ approval a cause making it pious, or an effect of its being pious, which the gods recognize?
• He calls this “the fundamental question” and cites Heisenberg: the Greeks’ ability to ask these questions of principle is “the most powerful tool” they gave us.

5. The same question applied elsewhere (“does it please my eyes because it is beautiful”) #

Point: the Euthyphro question can be asked of many definitions and laws, and the answer changes everything.

• Augustine quotes the first definition of the beautiful: that which pleases when seen (a painting, fall foliage). He asks: beautiful because it pleases my eyes, or pleases my eyes because beautiful? Augustine has no doubt pleasing is an effect: it may be how I recognize the beautiful, but it is not what makes it beautiful. Consequence for the beaux arts: if beauty were just its effect on us, beauty would be nothing in the thing; if pleasing is an effect, one must look deeper at what beauty consists in (order, symmetry, “things of this stuff”).
• Ten Commandments: is murder bad because commanded against, or commanded against because bad? Even “my crazy students” say the latter; the commandment exists so we especially avoid what is very bad. Honor father and mother likewise: God saw it as very good and commanded it so we would do it. This “makes all the difference” in understanding the Commandments.
• Contrast: the law to drive on the right (or, in England, the left). Here it is the reverse; a student says it is by convenience. What matters is deciding one and being consistent; neither side is good in itself, else either the English or we are bad people. Distinction: positive law (laid down, makes the thing good) vs. natural law (the thing is naturally good or bad, the law only encourages or discourages, does not make it so).
• Mozart: “you only say his music is best because you like it most”; no, “I like it most because it is the best.” Likewise God: we do not call God best because we love Him most; we love Him most because we know He is best.

6. Applying it to the first definition of good (“a definition by cause, or a definition by effect”) #

Point: Plato and Euthyphro taught him the basic question to ask of the first definition of good: is it a definition by cause or by effect? Is something good because we want it, or do we want it because it is good? Equivalently: is wanting the cause or the effect of the good?

• Parallel: Aristotle first defines virtue as a praiseworthy quality; the praise does not make it a virtue, so that is a definition by effect.
• Why we often define by effect before by cause: the effect is more obvious; the first road of knowledge is from sense, and the senses know effects more than causes.
• The dog: students say “an animal” (so is a man), “four-footed” (so is a cat), then “a four-footed animal that barks.” Granting for argument that only dogs bark: is it a dog because it barks, or does it bark because it is a dog? If it stops barking it does not cease to be a dog, so barking does not make it a dog; it barks because it is a dog. Socrates’ point: “you haven’t told me fully what a dog is,” only an effect of being a dog rather than a cat, though that is better than nothing and easier, since I hear the barking across the street. Cat as “four-footed animal that meows”: same question.
• Student: is barking an inseparable accident? He answers: it could be taken as a property, something that follows upon the nature. By contrast, white does not follow upon being a man; it is an inseparable accident of the white man but a simple accident of that individual, as black is of the black man.

7. Objections on both sides, left standing (“Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast”) #

Point: you may have the correct answer in mind, but “let’s be slow”; he takes Friar Lawrence’s advice to Romeo (Romeo and Juliet), Franciscan advice.

• Objection to “good because wanted” (students: it would cease to be good when you stop wanting it; different people want different things, “what’s good for this guy and not that guy,” as they say today; too much candy, or candy for a diabetic). His stock examples: the last drink at the party you said yes to and got sick on; you wanted it, yet admit it was not good for you. The kid who wanted to drive 100 mph down the windy road and wrapped the car round a tree, now in traction; he wanted it, no one else pressed the pedal, and even he sees it was not good. Everyone has such cases; if wanting made a thing good, that drink and that drive would have been good for them.
• Objection to “wanted because good”: less obvious, but real. (a) If the good caused wanting, everything good should be wanted by everybody; yet the good is not always wanted: the kid does not want school or bed though he needs education and sleep. (b) Contrary causes have contrary effects and vice versa: cold makes butter hard, so the contrary, hot, makes it soft. Then if good causes wanting, bad should cause aversion; but people are often attracted to bad things (“cancer care or something”).
• Aside: he admits he has been “confusing the issue a bit,” as his old teacher Kasurik used to say of himself.
• He states the task: not only decide which side is more true, but answer the objection on the other side; he says “I’ll explain this,” but does not do so here. How to decide is left for after the break; “page fifteen.”

His words #

• dialogue: Greek for conversation.
• epistēmē: knowledge (what Theaetetus is asked about).
• confused / distinct: order of our knowing, from the confused and less known to the distinct and more known.
• first road of knowledge: from the senses into reason; senses know only singulars.
• the good is what all desire / what all want: “the first definition of good.”
• question of before and after (cause and effect): the Euthyphro question, “questions of principle” (Heisenberg’s phrase).
• first definition of the beautiful: that which pleases when seen (Augustine).
• beaux arts: “the beautiful arts.”
• positive law vs. natural law: a law laid down (drive on the right) vs. a law about what is naturally good or bad (honor parents, murder).
• definition by cause / by effect: the two ways a definition may name the thing.
• praiseworthy quality: Aristotle’s first definition of virtue, a definition by effect.
• property: what follows upon the nature (barking, meowing, taken as such).
• simple accident / inseparable accident: white is inseparable of the white man but a simple accident of the individual, not following upon man.
• contrary causes have contrary effects: the principle behind the second objection (butter hard/soft).
• “wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast”: Friar Lawrence.

Texts #

Read in class

• Berquist, handout “A Note on Practical Philosophy”, p. 2 (verified source, about three minutes).
• DHB Vol III - The School of Aristotle, p. 1071 (verified source).

Mentioned

• Plato, Meno (virtue; Meno’s definition: desire for good things and ability to achieve them).
• Plato, Euthyphro (pious = what the gods approve; the cause/effect question).
• Plato, Theaetetus (what is epistēmē); Plato, Laches (what is courage).
• Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, book II (definition from examples).
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, opening (every art, science, choice aims at some good) (inferred: book I).
• Aristotle, definition of virtue as a praiseworthy quality (locus not given).
• Augustine, first definition of the beautiful (locus not given).
• Gospel saying, “unless you become again like a little child” (locus not given).
• Heisenberg on the Greeks’ questions of principle.
• Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Friar Lawrence’s “wisely and slow.”
• The Ten Commandments (murder; honor father and mother).

His questions #

• What is good? How would you define good? The good is what all desire, what all want: the first definition, the starting point.
• Why do we tend to give examples before a definition? From confused to distinct; and the senses, our first road, know only singulars.
• What do candy, pizza, bicycle and vacation have in common for the boy? Student: pleasing to the senses; he: all things he wants.
• Does the desire for good things separate the virtuous man from the vicious? No; the bank robber wants good things for himself too.
• Is it pious because the gods approve, or do the gods approve because it is pious? Left open as the model question; Augustine’s parallel on beauty answered “effect.”
• Is murder bad because commanded against, or commanded against because bad? Because it is bad; the commandment does not make it bad (natural law).
• Is it good to drive on the left because it is a law? Yes; here the law makes it good, by convenience and consistency (positive law).
• Is it a dog because it barks, or does it bark because it is a dog? It barks because it is a dog; barking is an effect, so the definition is incomplete.
• Is something good because it is wanted? What is the obvious objection? The last drink, the 100-mph drive: wanted, yet not good.
• Is something wanted because it is good? Any objection? The good is not always wanted, and people want bad things; left open at the break.