“Goodness and Choice”
This is a remarkable article by Philippa Foot, stunning us with countless examples of how the word “good” is used. But, unbeknownst to her, all of these uses come under one of three categories: physical, moral, or metaphysical. Foot objects against the argument that reduces goodness to “that which is chosen.” And she is right: this is merely physical goodness created under conditions of scarcity, in which certain lesser goods (from the point of view of the agent choosing) must be set aside for the sake of some greater good. Goods are chosen (or, better, chosen things are called goods) for the sake of satisfying some desire.
On the contrary, a good knife is a moral knife, in that it, too, must live up to an ideal, though a man-made one. As long as a knife cuts at all, it remains essentially a knife, while sharpness is its accident or virtue. Of course, a knife does not love its virtue, being only an inanimate object; nor does its sharpness make the knife “worthy of happiness,” as virtue makes humans. But the point stands: sharpness is a moral good in a knife. The ideal of the knify goodness, again, depends on human purpose. If in some possible world objects that looked exactly like knives were used for a different purpose, such as marking plots of land, then they would not be “knives.” But that’s a purely semantic point.
A good farmer is a farmer who lives up to some standard of farming, again, a virtue or, more properly, an art. Foot wonders who is responsible for the creation of “moral” standards for things and operations. Well, you know, people do. Is it really that important? I think not, but our author’s examples illustrate my theory brilliantly.
Posted: March 24th, 2009 under Ethics, Philosophy.