Ethics
1. What Is Good? The First Definition and the Socratic Question of Cause vs. Effect
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[0:08] Now, what is good? How would you define good? What is good? We've heard before: the good is what all desire. Okay. Starting point. Now, let's go back a little bit before that, right? Let's imitate Plato, right? Who's one of the chief philosophers in history? Wrote these famous conversations of Socrates, dialogues of Socrates. If you read the dialogues of Plato, which are representations of Socrates conversing with people, dialogue is a Greek word for conversation.

[0:59] Very many of the dialogues are asking what is something, right? So he asks Meno, for example, what is virtue, right? " Or he asks Euthyphro, "What is piety? " Or he asks Theaetetus, "What is episteme, right? " He's now asking knowledge. What is that? He asks Laches, "What is courage, right? "

[1:28] Now, Plato represents the man to whom Socrates addresses this question. Usually, is giving examples of the thing when he's asked what it is. And here you understand Plato's understanding of the way human beings begin, right? They're more apt to begin when asked what something is by giving examples of it than by giving a definition of it. They are more apt to begin by giving examples of the thing than even trying to give a universal definition of it.

[2:20] And perhaps the younger and the more inexperienced they are, the less they heard, they will begin with examples, right? So, if we brought a little boy, for example, into this room here, set him at down the table here, we said to him, "Now, Johnny, what is a nose? " What do You think he'd say? Say, that's a nose. Yeah, that's a nose. That's a nose. He starts pointing at your nose or my nose, right?

[2:51] He wouldn't even attempt to give a what definition of what a nose is. Okay. If you asked him, "What is a chair? " This is a chair. This is a chair. This chair. We tend to give examples, huh? And is there a reason why we tend to give examples before a definition, or before even trying to give a definition, which is something universal? What is the reason?

[3:27] Because we always tend to proceed from the confused and less known to the distinct and more known. Okay, but perhaps even more basic is that the first road to our knowledge is from the senses into reason, and the senses don't know anything universal, let alone any definitions, right? So the senses know only singulars, and they are only examples of the what universal, okay? If you ask someone what is an animal, they may say, "Well, like something like a dog, a cat, you know, horse—that's what an animal is," and give some kind of, as you say, a confused notion of what it is, right?

[4:04] But in a way, I'm giving examples of that animal, right? What is water? Well, when you turn faucet on, the lake out there, the rain—that's water, you know. I've been giving examples of water, right? Okay.

[4:21] So if Socrates was to ask, let's say, a boy, American boy, what is good, right? Would the boy probably answer at first? Candy. Yeah, candy's good, pizza's good, and Socrates would say, "Well, is anything good besides the things you can eat like candy and pizza?" He said, "Well, baseball's good, or football's good, or bicycles are good, or vacation is good, right?" Okay, but he would be giving what examples of things he considers good, and Socrates would. usually stop somewhere along here, right?

[5:02] And he'll say, "Now, I asked you for one thing, and you gave me many." And sometimes he makes a joke. I think I told you there's a some. I think it's a proverb or something in Greek. You know, if you break a dish in handing it to somebody, huh? You know, say I asked you one dish, not. But that's what Socrates is saying. And so he's trying to explain the difference between giving examples of a thing and defining it, right?

[5:31] And the most obvious difference between those two is that there are many examples, maybe even endless amount number of examples of the thing, right? But there seems to be only one definition, or at least one complete definition of it. Now, those those are two different things. There's a connection between the two, right? Because that one definition is going to bring together what's common to those examples, okay?

[6:04] And so even Aristotle in the second book of the Posterior Analytics and Logic will say one road to a definition, right? Could start from examples, huh? And what you would do is compare those examples and separate out what they have in common and leave aside their differences, right? So if we say that the girl in the ocean there in California that swam out into the shark-infested water, where a young man got his leg chopped by a shark, right?

[6:40] And she pulled him into shore, right? We'd say she was a brave woman, right? Okay. And if we say that the soldier who gets up and charges the enemy, right? He's a brave man, right? And we say that the fireman who ran into the building that was collapsing and rescued the baby and so on was a brave man, right? We'd say, well,

[7:05] what do these have in common? The shark and the bullets that are flying out there in the battlefield and the burning collapsing building. Two different hazards. Yeah, there are things that could end your life, right? And so here you have three people who are going into something or towards something in their life, right? But you could maybe add for a good reason, right? To save the young man, or to save the baby, or to defend the country, or something of this sort, right?

[7:41] So you're starting to pull out what's common to those who are brave, right? There are those who risk their life, right? But for a good reason, huh? Okay, as opposed to foolhardy man who risks his life, right? For no good reason, or the coward who, even for a good reason, won't risk his life. Do you see that? Okay.

[8:11] So, if you got into the little boy, this recognition that there is a difference between giving examples of good things and then bringing out what's common to all those examples, right? Now, what does candy and pizza? One is sweet and one is, clearly, different taste, right? And then the bicycle can't eat that at all. And the vacation, I guess, not even like a thing. I don't know what you call it, right?

[8:45] What do all these things have in common that he himself would recognize, right? That's what he has in mind when he calls them all good. What do you say?

[9:01] Pleasing to the senses. What? Pleasing to the senses. Yeah, or in general, these are all things that he wants, right? He wants candy. He wants pizza. He wants a bicycle. He wants vacation, right? So all the things that he wants, he calls good, right? Okay.

[9:23] Ah, I think I mentioned how in the dialogue called "Meno Meno's trying to define virtue, right? And he comes up with a definition of virtue. It sounds pretty good: the desire for good things and the ability to achieve them. Sounds pretty high class, right? And Socrates says, "Well, now, does a desire for good things separate the virtuous man from the vicious man? Doesn't the vicious man want good things for himself too?

[9:59] Doesn't the man who goes to the bank?"And robs the bank, doesn't he want something good for himself? Yeah. So eventually, Meno is forced to admit that the vicious man, as well as the virtuous man, wants good things for himself. So it seems that everybody wants good things for himself. So that doesn't separate the good man from the bad man. It seems, and Meno can't see any way out of this.

[10:30] Now, I, remember one time when the kids were quite little, and they have you know three little kids around the table there, and dinner is being served. Sometimes this is a good dinner, Mama. You know, sometimes oh, Mama, this is awful. You see, and my oldest there, Paul, one day kind of out of blue figured out, you know, you know, if we like the dinner, if you want it, then we call it good.

[10:55] If we don't want it, you know, then it's bad. You see, that's that's kind of the first notion, right? You know, our Lord said, "Unless you become again like a little child, you can't enter the kingdom of heaven." Right? You can say something like that for philosophy, right? Unless you become again like a little child, you can't enter the kingdom of philosophy. And the likeness there consists, though, in the fact that the little boy tends to begin with what is really more known to us, and that's where the philosopher should start with what is more known to all of us, right?

[11:30] And the little child will not so much, I repeat, something that his teacher in college said, or something he saw in a book, or something. He'll start with where we all originally started, calling good the things we want. Right. So this is sometimes called then the first definition of good. Okay. The good is what all these words desire. We

[12:05] can use the native English word. The good is what all want. Might call this the first definition of good. That's what the good is. Okay.

[12:33] And Aristotle begins the Nicomachean Ethics, right? By kind of induction, every art and every science and every choice and action aims at some good, right? Therefore, they define the good. Well, you see it, the good is what all want? The good is what all desire. That's where he begins the Nicomachean Ethics. Okay. Now, maybe next time I'll give you a little. bit of Nicomachean Ethics, right? From the very beginning, you know, where he really does that.

[13:06] But we want to develop this on our own here for a while. Now this goes back to Plato and maybe before Plato too, but you'd find it a little child in a sense, right?

[13:19] And it's touched upon, as they say, in the Meno. Now, in the dialogue that comes after the Meno, in the dialogue called the Euthyphro,

[13:40] Socrates teaches us there how to ask a very basic kind of question—a question which is a question of before and after, in the sense of cause and effect.

[14:03] Euthyphro has been defining, after giving examples, tries to give us a definition of piety, that the pious is what the gods approve of, okay, or the pious is what the gods are pleased with, right? Okay.

[14:23] And Socrates asks the question of Euthyphro. Well, is it pious because the gods approve of it, or is it reverse that the gods approve of it because it is pious?

[14:42] Okay. Is it pious because it pleases the gods, right? Or does it please the gods because it is pious? Another way of stating the question is: Is the approval? Of the gods, a cause making it to be pious, right? Or is it an effect

[15:12] of its being pious, and the gods recognize it as being pious? See, that's the fundamental question, right? Okay. Now, Heisenberg, the great physicist in the twentieth century, some put him next to Einstein. Heisenberg said that the Greeks were able to ask these questions of principle. This is the most powerful tool, he said, that the Greeks gave us. Huh? Most powerful tool. But you see an example of that in this question of Euthyphro.

[15:51] You could ask that kind of question, not just about Euthyphro's definition of the pious, but about many other things. Huh? Now, give an example from another Platonist named Saint Augustine, right? Okay. Saint Augustine quotes the first definition of the beautiful. The beautiful is that which pleases when seen. Okay, this is the first definition of the beautiful.

[16:47] So when I see a painting and it pleases my eyes, it's how beautiful, right? Or if I see the fall foliage, you know, it's how beautiful, right?

[16:57] Now, Augustine asks the same kind of question that Socrates teaches us to ask here, and asks regarding this definition. Augustine asks, "Is it beautiful because it pleases my eyes,

[17:17] or does it please my eyes because it is beautiful? " Or to put the question a little different, is it's pleasing my eyes an effect of its being beautiful, or is that the cause that makes the thing beautiful?

[17:41] Well, Augustine, being intelligent, says he has no doubt that this is an effect of its being beautiful, right? That it's not beautiful because it pleases my eyes. That might be how I recognize it as beautiful, right? But that's not what makes it to be beautiful. But rather pleases my eyes because it is what beautiful, okay? You can see how important that question is when you get into the beau arts, as they call them, the beautiful arts, right?

[18:16] Arts the beautiful because if you say beautiful, it's beautiful because it pleases us, right? Then beauty be nothing but in the thing, right? We call it beauty because this effect it has upon us, right? But if this is an effect that is being beautiful, right? Then you have to look more deeply to see what the beautiful beauty consists in, right? Okay, order and symmetry and things. This stuff, right?

[18:50] You could apply this to the question of of law, right? I sometimes ask about the Ten Commandments, right? I say it's a commandment that you shouldn't murder people, right?

[19:06] Now, is it bad to murder people because there's a commandment against it? Or did God make a commandment against it because it is bad?

[19:20] Even my crazy students are gonna usually say it's what it's a commandment against it because it is bad, right? That the commandment was not there to cause murder to be something bad, but because it is bad and very bad, right? God has given the commandment against it, so we will especially avoid that doing, right? Okay. Or there's a commandment to honor your father and mother, right? Now, is it good to honor your father and mother because there's a commandment to do so?

[20:00] Or. did. God see it as being good to honor your father and mother, and and very good to do so, right? And therefore, He gave us a commandment so we would do what is in fact very good to do. It makes all the difference in your understanding of the Ten Commandments, right? To see

[20:24] which of those is true, right? Okay. Now there might be some kind of law, or it's the reverse, right? Like the law to drive on the right side of the street, or the law to drive on the left side of the street, right? So you might say, when you're in England, it's good to drive on the left side of the street.

[20:53] Well, that's a law, in England, say, right? Okay. But is it good because it's a law to do that, or is a law to do so because it is good?

[21:07] It's just by convenience, and it's just. Yeah, yeah. See, what's what's important is that you decide either to go on the right or the left and and be consistent, right? So you know it's going to be good. But it's not because driving on the right or on the left is either one is good and the other one is bad, right? Otherwise, you have to see that the English are bad people, or or we're bad people, one of the two, right?

[21:33] You see? Okay. So you can distinguish between what they might call, you know, a positive law, a law that's laid down, like you know, we're laying down a law that in this city you're going to drive on the right side, and a law which is a natural law, right? There's something naturally good or bad, like honoring your mother and father or committing murder, right? Where one is naturally good and the other is naturally bad.

[22:00] And the law is there just to encourage the one and discourage the other, right? But the law doesn't make the one to be good and the other to be bad, right? Do you see that? Okay. So you're

[22:18] asking the same kind of question that Socrates asks here. Someone says, "If I say, you know, Mozart's music is the best," and I say, "Well, you just say that because you like his music the best." I says, "No, you got it backwards. See, I like his music the most because it is the best. It's not the best because I like it the most. See, but they assume that when I say it's the best is because I like it the most, right?

[22:53] Okay. No, I like it the most because it is the best. Everybody's saying, you know, if you love God the most, right? That's why we say God's the best, right? No, you're all wrong. It's because you know He's the best that you love Him the most, right? You see the point? See? So that kind of question that Socrates teaches us to ask here, that he uses with Euthyphro there in the dialogue called Euthyphro, could be applied to this what definition of good, right?

[23:34] Okay, and that's how Plato taught me to do, right? Plato and Euthyphro taught me to ask the kind of question that is the basic question now to ask about the first definition of good. Is this a definition by cause, or is this a definition by effect? Okay.

[23:57] Or to use, you know, the other way of speaking, say, is it good? Is something good because we want it, or do we want it because it is good? Okay. So,

[24:18] is something good because meaning the cause being the cause being, or is it wanted because it is good? Which do you think? See, another way of putting these two questions would be to say,

[25:14] "Is wanting the cause or the effect of the good?" Okay. And then going back to the first definition of good, right? Is this a definition by cause or by effect?

[25:49] Is the first definition of good a definition by cause or by effect? When Aristotle first defines virtue, right? I speak of as being a praiseworthy quality, right? Now, is that a definition by cause or by effect when you define virtue as a praiseworthy quality. Right. Yeah, yeah. And does the praise make it to be a virtue?

[26:39] So the praise is more an effect, right, of its being a virtuous, being a virtue, right? Okay. Now again, very often we define by effect before we define by cause. And what's the reason for that?

[27:02] Obvious. Now, why is it more obvious to us? The effect, the effect, the effect. Yeah? What's the first road in our knowledge? Sense. Yeah, the road from the senses into reason. What do the senses know more, the cause or the effect? The effect. Yeah. So, you know, Socrates asked me, you know, what is a dog, right? And probably if I was not giving examples, trying to say universal, what it is.

[27:33] I'd probably begin by saying a dog is an animal. That's usually the way students begin when I ask in class, "What is a dog?" Yeah. Say, well, so's so's a man. Well, it's a four-footed animal, not a two-footed animal. Well, so is a cat, right? Okay. Now, maybe about this time, the average person gets stumped, right? It's a four-footed animal that barks. Okay. Now let's let's, for the sake of argument, say that the dog is the only animal that barks.

[28:04] If there's some other creature that does, but even if the dog was the only four-footed animal that barks, right? Would this be a definition by cause or by effect? You see, well, Socrates might say, "Well, is it a dog, Mister Burquist, because it barks, or does it bark because it is a dog, Mister Burquist?" Which is it? You see, it stops barking. Does it cease to be a dog?

[28:35] No. So barking doesn't make it to be a dog, does it, Mister Burquist? No. So it must be that it barks because it is a dog, right? And Socrates' point would be, well, Burquist, you haven't told me fully what a dog is because you haven't said what makes it to be a dog rather than a cat, right? You're. Talking about some effect or result of being a dog rather than a cat.

[28:58] That's better than nothing, right? And it's easier for me to do that. if I hear the bark, and I hear it. It barks by the dog all the time across the street. Okay, and the cat's meowing all the time, right? Okay. So cat is a four-footed animal that meows. See, okay. Now, Mister Burquist, is it a cat because it meows, or is it meowing because it is a cat?

[29:21] So you're still asking the same question, right? See, all these things that questions be asked about, right? Is meowing the cause that makes a cat to be a cat, or is an effect of what the cat is? You see, and if it's an effect of what the cat is, then it doesn't make known fully what the cat is, does it? Is that is that the inseparable accident?

[29:46] Is that a thing? Well, it could be something one can or property. Could take maybe as a property. If it's something that follows upon nature, so property is something that follows upon the nature, right? Or by being say white could be a more simple accident, right? Because to be white doesn't follow upon being a man. What a man is, to be just a man, right? It's an inseparable accident of a man right But it's a simple accident of this individual, right?

[30:13] Or black would be a simple accident of the black man, right? Okay. So you see the kind of question that Socrates is asking us, and how important a question that is, huh?

[30:32] Now, you may have in mind, you know, the correct answer to this question, but let's be slow about it, right? Let's follow the advice of Friar Lawrence the Franciscan there, right? Listen to Franciscan advice, you know, St. Francis. Hey, also take Friar Lawrence there in the Romeo Juliet, and he says to Romeo, "Wisely and slow, right? They stumble they run fast, huh? Okay. So let's look at this, huh?

[31:02] Okay. Is something good because it is wanted? What's an obvious objection to this, right? What's the obvious objection to saying that something is good because it is wanted? It ceases to be good when you don't want it anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Because different people have different desires. So some one might desire something and another not. Yeah, but you might say what's good for this guy and not for that.

[31:37] guy. That's what they'd say today, you know. Yeah. Is there something just in my individual experience, or a biologist would say that something is not good for me just because I want it? Sure. Yeah. What would that be in my experience? Too much candy. Huh? I mean, and candy if I'm diabetic or. Yeah. Yeah. It may look good, but after I've had it, it could be yeah totally different effect.

[32:06] My stock example is that of if at the party, and the host or hostess says you want another drink, right? You say yes, you want another drink, and then oh, I then they get sick after that last drink, so you wanted it, but even you would admit that it was not good for you, right? I shouldn't have had the last drink, right? Okay. So, or the kid who wanted to drive his car 100 miles an hour down the swindy road, right?

[32:34] And he's trapped it around a tree, and his car is wrecked, and he's in traction. You know, it was good to drive your car, you know, 100 miles an hour down the swindy road. Even he realized it's not good for his car and not even good for himself, right? You see. But he wanted to do it. No question, wanted to do it, right? No one was was pressing his foot down on the gas pedal, right?

[32:54] He was doing himself, right? So, without getting into things, you know, that people might disagree about, everybody has in their experience. Examples of things that they in fact didn't want, but which now they realize or realize later were not good for them, right? So, if wanting something made it good for you, the fact that I wanted that last drink would have made that last drink good for me, right?

[33:26] The fact that I wanted to drive my car 100 miles an hour down the windy road, right, made it good for me to drive my car at that speed down that road, huh? Okay. So that's kind of the obvious objection to saying that something is good because it is wanted, okay?

[33:48] But now look at the other side, right? Is there any obvious objection to saying something is wanted because it is good? Maybe not as obvious an objection, but some kind of objection. Everybody would want something.

[34:13] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So my argument is now well, the good is not always wanted, right? If the good were the cause of wanting, then the fact that something is good should mean that everybody wants it, right?

[34:33] But perhaps someone might use the same example and say, "Well, contrary causes have contrary effects, and vice versa, contrary effects have contrary causes. That's kind of makes some sense, doesn't it, huh? I mean, if the butter gets hard sometimes, and the butter gets soft, right? Would you expect the same thing to make the butter? hard, and to make the butter soft, no. But as hard and soft are contrary, you'd expect contrary causes, right?

[35:09] So if coldness makes the butter hard, then the contrary of hard, which is soft, should be caused by the contrary of cold, which is hot, and that's exactly the way it is, right? Okay. Do you see that? So if good is the cause of wanting, right, then the contrary of good, which is the bad, should be the cause of aversion or turning away, right? Okay. But don't people sometimes want things that are bad for them?

[35:45] So if good were the cause of wanting, bad should be the cause of turning away. And people seem to be attracted to bad things quite often, right? So how can you say

[35:59] that it's wanted because it's good, right? Sometimes people don't want what is good for them. A Kid doesn't want to go to school. A Kid doesn't want to go to bed. Right? He needs a sleep. Right? He needs education. He doesn't want what's good for him. Right?

[36:20] And then they seem to want bad things sometimes, right? And if you add to the idea that contrary effects have contrary causes and vice versa, it makes sense, right? Okay. I was kind of confusing the issue a bit, as my old teacher, Kasurik, would say, right? This is the teacher who confused the issue a bit, right? So let's take a little break now, right? Huh? Which is it?

[36:46] Do you see? It's a little, a little, a little bit of difficulty on either side, right? Okay. So we not only have to answer the question as best we can to begin with,

[37:05] but we also have to what answer the objection the other side, right? If I come down the side that it's good because what you want it, well then contradicts that last drink not being good for me, right? Okay. But even if I take the more reasonable side that I want it because it is good, right? But why isn't the good then always wanted, right? Why do you have the cause not the effect, right?

[37:39] And if contrary causes have contrary effects, then the if the good is the cause of wanting, then the bad should be the cause of what the opposite of wanting, aversion, turning away from. Yet people seem to turn towards, you know, bad things like cancer care or something, right? Okay.

[38:00] And I'll explain this. Okay. But before we answer the objection to side, we've got to try to see, you know, which side seems to be more what true, right? Okay, and how should we do that? Little break now. Page fifteen.