Big Question 1

[Immanuel Can]

No,
Well-being.

Done; now we can move on

What's "well-being"?

Hitler's version of well-being isn't yours, I trust (racial purity). Nor is Stalin's (conformity to the collective), nor the Buddha's (detachment from reality), nor Islam's (submission). And for my part, I would never consider a man to be in a state of "wellbeing" who did not also have a healthy, right relationship with God -- that would be like claiming a man who had a good liver was "well," even when the rest of his body was riddled with cancer.

So what do you mean by "well-being"?

[KLewchuk]

No,
Well-being.

Done; now we can move on

What's "well-being"?

Hitler's version of well-being isn't yours, I trust (racial purity). Nor is Stalin's (conformity to the collective), nor the Buddha's (detachment from reality), nor Islam's (submission). And for my part, I would never consider a man to be in a state of "wellbeing" who did not also have a healthy, right relationship with God -- that would be like claiming a man who had a good liver was "well," even when the rest of his body was riddled with cancer.

So what do you mean by "well-being"?

We can start with this. I would assert that most humans have had something like the the following experience. You desire something, at some point, because at that time it appears to you to be "good". To keep it simple, it may be that extra serving of pie or glass of wine. You later discover that you were wrong, the pie resulted in stomach aches and the wine in a hangover. Hence, we can be wrong about what provides us with well-being... at least over a period of time.

It is such an obvious fact (i.e. that we can be wrong about what provides us with well being) that it should not be controversial; it is a ubiquitous experience. If you've never experienced this, you are indeed unique. If you have, you can reflect upon what this means with respect to a philosophy of well-being.

BTW, I am generally echoing some of the writings of Mortimer J. Adler.

[Age]

A person is what he does. If he does bad things (or never does anything good), he is a bad person, period. You might like him. He might be charismatic. He might make you laugh. If he does bad things, he's a bad person.

But what is, supposedly, "good", or "bad", is relative, to each person.

What is, supposedly, "good", or "bad", is relative, to each person. Really?

Yes.

Lung cancer is good for some people and bad for others?

Are you telling me some thing here or are you asking me a question? Your sentence is written as a statement but with a question mark at the end.

Anyway, again, absolutely EVERY thing is relative to the observer.

So, if one sees lung cancer as being "good" or "bad", then that is entirely up to that observer.

Now, i would be very surprised if any human being sees them self having lung cancer as being a "good" thing, but, obviously, some people would see some "others" having lung cancer as being a "good" thing.

Also, obviously the way you are portraying your statement/question here is NOT what I was intending to mean. Do you know of ANY one who, them self, has lung cancer sees this as being a "good" thing?

If you do not, and have not heard of ANY one who does see them self has having lung cancer as being a "good" thing, then this might be a clear sign of what the answer is to your statement, with a question mark.

Now, besides all of this what is "good" or "bad" is AGAIN relative to the observer, or each person. So, to some people, lung cancer, itself, is NOT a "good" NOR a "bad" thing at all. To these ones lung cancer is just a thing, that happens in Life.

And besides all of this now, my reply was in relation to what human beings, themselves, DO, and NOT what happens to them.

[Immanuel Can]

What's "well-being"?

It is such an obvious fact (i.e. that we can be wrong about what provides us with well being) that it should not be controversial;

Yes, well that adds an additional problem to the idea of "wellbeing": if people don't even really know what it is, sometimes, how do we decide they're wrong and we're right? We would need a meta-definition, an objectively-true account of wellbeing to support our case to show we're right and they're wrong.

But it seems that not even you and I agree about what constitutes wellbeing, apparently; so what are the chances that anybody else will?

[Ginkgo]

No,
Well-being.

Done; now we can move on

What's "well-being"?

Hitler's version of well-being isn't yours, I trust. Nor is Stalin's, nor the Buddha's, nor Islam's. And for my part, I would never consider a man to be in a state of "wellbeing" who did not also have a right relationship with God -- that would be like claiming a man who had a good liver was "well," even when the rest of his body was riddled with cancer.

So what do you mean by "well-being"?

Well, I am in a state of well-being and I don't have a relationship with God. How do you explain that?

[Immanuel Can]

No,
Well-being.

Done; now we can move on

What's "well-being"?

Hitler's version of well-being isn't yours, I trust. Nor is Stalin's, nor the Buddha's, nor Islam's. And for my part, I would never consider a man to be in a state of "wellbeing" who did not also have a right relationship with God -- that would be like claiming a man who had a good liver was "well," even when the rest of his body was riddled with cancer.

So what do you mean by "well-being"?

Well, I am in a state of well-being and I don't have a relationship with God. How do you explain that?

How do I explain that, you ask?

Well, okay. I'll say what I think.

Heroin addicts have a tremendous sense of wellbeing in the beginning. It's what gets them started. But I don't think we want to say that feelings are the best metric of their actual situation, do we? And people with various diseases often feel quite well, and are surprised to find that their liver is full of cancer or they're about to experience Huntington's or Parkinson's diseases. So mere feelings of wellbeing are not always justified, are they?

If God exists, and since I believe He does, then, with all apologies to whatever you feel, you are in no state of wellbeing. Of that, I'm afraid you can be certain. It's just not optional to human welfare to be out of joint with the Source of all goodness, life, heath, hope, love, blessing and ultimate happiness. In fact, to feel good under those circumstances would be worse than to feel disturbed; at least the uneasy person has a chance of recognizing his real situation. The person who feels that he is already being well...well, that guy's just lost. Better to feel not-so-well.

[Ginkgo]

What's "well-being"?

Hitler's version of well-being isn't yours, I trust. Nor is Stalin's, nor the Buddha's, nor Islam's. And for my part, I would never consider a man to be in a state of "wellbeing" who did not also have a right relationship with God -- that would be like claiming a man who had a good liver was "well," even when the rest of his body was riddled with cancer.

So what do you mean by "well-being"?

Well, I am in a state of well-being and I don't have a relationship with God. How do you explain that?

How do I explain that, you ask?

Well, okay. I'll say what I think.

Heroin addicts have a tremendous sense of wellbeing in the beginning. It's what gets them started. But I don't think we want to say that feelings are the best metric of their actual situation, do we? And people with various diseases often feel quite well, and are surprised to find that their liver is full of cancer or they're about to experience Huntington's or Parkinson's diseases. So mere feelings of wellbeing are not always justified, are they?

If God exists, and since I believe He does, then, with all apologies to whatever you feel, you are in no state of wellbeing. Of that, I'm afraid you can be certain. It's just not optional to human welfare to be out of joint with the Source of all goodness, life, heath, hope, love, blessing and ultimate happiness. In fact, to feel good under those circumstances would be worse than to feel disturbed; at least the uneasy person has a chance of recognizing his real situation. The person who feels that he is already being well...well, that guy's just lost. Better to feel not-so-well.

In other words, you are saying that my sense of well-being is delusional. I could just as easily say your sense of well-being is also delusional since it is based on a myth.

[Immanuel Can]

In other words, you are saying that my sense of well-being is delusional. I could just as easily say your sense of well-being is also delusional since it is based on a myth.

You could believe that. Sure. And if your worldview were true, you would be right, just as I would be right about you if mine is right. So the primary question, of course, is what's ultimately true: ontology precedes ethics.

However, the point for the present argument is this: your "wellbeing" definition is not one that could ever be adequate from my perspective, and you can see why. You would be asking me to believe that a person who was happily marching to Judgment and a lost eternity was "well," and obviously, from my perspective, that could never be right. We are not both convinced of some facile idea of "wellbeing" that generalizes to all.

The problem is much larger, though. I'm not alone in having a view of wellbeing irreconcilable with yours. You would also never satisfy a Buddhist or Hindu definition of "wellbeing" either. For them, reality is a source of soul-suffering ("samsara"), and a realm of delusion ("maya"). Only through detachment, the denial of pleasure and pain, and anything else that ties you through desire to this world can you "be well" in their terms. So your feeling of being well in the here and now is actually a signal of you drifting away from your enlightenment, and away from your nirvana or the dissolution of your consciousness into the transcendent. They would thus never call you "well."

A polytheist, an Islamist, a Zoroastrian, an Idealist...there are many perspectives from which your idea of "wellbeing" would not ever be accepted as adequate. So the big point is this: there's no answer to the problems of morality or meaning by appealing to the idea that everybody has the same sense of "wellbeing." Very obviously, they do not. So we can't appeal to "wellbeing" as a common orientation point. People disagree fundamentally about what it means.

KLewchuck thinks "wellbeing" answers the bell here. Sam Harris tries the same routine. But as you can see, that doesn't really answer anything.

We're back to this question: what's "wellbeing"?

[uwot]

In other words, you are saying that my sense of well-being is delusional. I could just as easily say your sense of well-being is also delusional since it is based on a myth.

You could believe that. Sure. And if your worldview were true, you would be right, just as I would be right about you if mine is right. So the primary question, of course, is what's ultimately true: ontology precedes ethics.

Since ya won't listen to me: “There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed.”
Bertrand Russell

[KLewchuk]

In other words, you are saying that my sense of well-being is delusional. I could just as easily say your sense of well-being is also delusional since it is based on a myth.

You could believe that. Sure. And if your worldview were true, you would be right, just as I would be right about you if mine is right. So the primary question, of course, is what's ultimately true: ontology precedes ethics.

However, the point for the present argument is this: your "wellbeing" definition is not one that could ever be adequate from my perspective, and you can see why. You would be asking me to believe that a person who was happily marching to Judgment and a lost eternity was "well," and obviously, from my perspective, that could never be right. We are not both convinced of some facile idea of "wellbeing" that generalizes to all.

The problem is much larger, though. I'm not alone in having a view of wellbeing irreconcilable with yours. You would also never satisfy a Buddhist or Hindu definition of "wellbeing" either. For them, reality is a source of soul-suffering ("samsara"), and a realm of delusion ("maya"). Only through detachment, the denial of pleasure and pain, and anything else that ties you through desire to this world can you "be well" in their terms. So your feeling of being well in the here and now is actually a signal of you drifting away from your enlightenment, and away from your nirvana or the dissolution of your consciousness into the transcendent. They would thus never call you "well."

A polytheist, an Islamist, a Zoroastrian, an Idealist...there are many perspectives from which your idea of "wellbeing" would not ever be accepted as adequate. So the big point is this: there's no answer to the problems of morality or meaning by appealing to the idea that everybody has the same sense of "wellbeing." Very obviously, they do not. So we can't appeal to "wellbeing" as a common orientation point. People disagree fundamentally about what it means.

KLewchuck thinks "wellbeing" answers the bell here. Sam Harris tries the same routine. But as you can see, that doesn't really answer anything.

We're back to this question: what's "wellbeing"?

The appeal to well being is used to define morality. You are correct that Sam Harris asserts this, as does Aristotle. You are also correct that this leaves open the idea of what "wellbeing" is. First, I would assert that the concept of "wellbeing" is similar to the concept of "health". It is difficult if impossible to define exactly what health is, it is an umbrella term, but that does not make the term vacuous. Second, the discussion of well being is wide ranging. For example, you can look into the current "happiness studies". You can look into Buddhist psychology which often focuses on well being as well as Stoicism. You can look into different political structures and how they contribute to subjective representations of well-being.. and so on. So, once you accept the definition of morality, then we are really into the realm of "applied ethics" or what may be deemed ethical for given circumstances and situations.

[Immanuel Can]

The appeal to well being is used to define morality.

That's what they want to use it for. They hope it will get them out of the job of explaining what they mean. The point is, it doesn't work. "Wellbeing" is not the incontestable, universal sort of term they want you to believe it is.

You are correct that Sam Harris asserts this, as does Aristotle.

Not Aristotle. His position is different. It's not "wellbeing" he advocates, but "blessedness," eudaemonia, in Greek. And he has definite ideas about teleology to support his conception of "blessedness." Sam Harris is trying to avoid that sort of work altogether (harsher reading)...or maybe (charitable reading) actually doesn't understand the problem himself, and is honestly confused.

You are also correct that this leaves open the idea of what "wellbeing" is.

That's a terminal problem, much worse than if he had just claimed "wellbeing" was just one thing. If we don't know what "wellbeing" might actually turn out to be, because it's fluid, there's not any way of orienting any kind of moral precepts toward it. We're now completely without a clue, when it comes to applied ethics.

First, I would assert that the concept of "wellbeing" is similar to the concept of "health". It is difficult if impossible to define exactly what health is, it is an umbrella term, but that does not make the term vacuous.

But "health" is an empirical state. It can be judged purely empirically, and has no moral element. Harris is looking for a way to say that morality can still exis, and morality is about values. So that's not actually a reasonable analogy. It must surely be clear to anyone that whether or not a person is "healthy" is not in any way a description of the nature of his moral condition. I'm quite staggered that he hasn't noticed such an obvious flaw in his logic.

Second, the discussion of well being is wide ranging. For example, you can look into the current "happiness studies". You can look into Buddhist psychology which often focuses on well being as well as Stoicism.

Yes, that's the point: many people have very different accounts of "wellbeing." And that's what we find out when we pay attention to the "discussion" that's out there, rather than glossing it all over, Harris-style.

Buddhists do not think pain and pleasure should matter: only detachment from both does. The Stoics have something somewhat similar, in that they are fatalistic about pain and pleasure, but for different reasons. J.S. Mill, on the other hand, insisted nobody is indifferent to pain and pleasure. Hedonists hold that pain and pleasure are pretty much the total story of why we do what we do. Randians and Nietzscheans would say that the pains and pleasures of certain people matter more than the pains and pleasures of others. Humanitarians argue that my pain and pleasure are to be secondary to other people's pain and pleasure. And Kant said that all of that was irrelevant, and morality could not be decided on any consequentialist grounds...it gets really messy, when you drill down into the details.

So, once you accept the definition of morality...

Which one? So far, we're still on the horns of several incompatible ones.

There's a history to this problem, and if I may stretch your patience, I'll lay it out for you. (If you don't care, you can ignore from here down.)

It really starts with the Enlightenment project of trying to ground ethics without reference to ideology -- universally, if you will. Kant's the first really ambitious practitioner of it, and then Mill, and then others. The project got additional urgency in the early modern period, when people like Dewey took it up, hoping to resolve problems of getting immigrants to play ball within a single polity by appealing to an attenuated common ground. Dewey thought that it might be located in "the Judeo-Christian consensus"; but he was only trying to reconcile ideologies like Judaism, Christianity and Eastern Orthodoxy. He thought that by appealing to a sort of "lowest common moral denominator," he could get everyone to agree to be good Americans.

That all fell apart in late modernity. But the '60s, it was becoming clear that it was not a "Judeo-Christian" consensus that was going to be needed, but a very broad way of pulling together those participants with Atheists, Buddhists, Islamists, Hindus, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, animists, Socialists, Capitalists, Wiccans, agnostics...and all sorts of other ideologies.

So by the time the current crop of ethicists started writing, it was already recognized by all of them that the "lowest common denominator" idea was doomed. What they work on now is a problem they call "irreconcilable (or "incommensurable") pluralism": namely, the question, "What do you do when you have to arrange political situations among constituents in a situation where there are certain to be winners and losers, those who are made happy and those that are made not so happy, by whatever you do?" And that's a much more serious problem for moral philosophy, and thus for applied ethics. It has to settle all our political, legal, social and administrative arrangements, not just our differences of theory. It can't be brushed away with the kind of solution that Dewey et al proposed.

Sam Harris is lost back in the early modern period. He's not pushing for a "Judeo-Christian" consensus, like Dewey was, but rather an entirely secular consensus, based on an undefined and undefinable idea called "wellbeing." But Harris is not an ethicist by training, and doesn't realize he's fighting a battle that was tried and lost fifty years ago. There really isn't a serious or credible ethicist in the academy today who is contesting the idea that irreconcilable pluralism is now the right way to understand the problem of moral legitimation. From Habermas to Rawls, to Rorty, Margolis and Singer, nobody is still thinking Harris's kind of solution is plausible.

I don't doubt that Mr. Harris has some smarts in some areas. He's got some degrees. But in ethics, he's way over his head, and doesn't know it. He's misunderstood the whole problem.

[KLewchuk]

The appeal to well being is used to define morality.

That's what they want to use it for. They hope it will get them out of the job of explaining what they mean. The point is, it doesn't work. "Wellbeing" is not the incontestable, universal sort of term they want you to believe it is.

The point is, it does work, and it is the incontestible, universal sort of term they want us to believe it is (see I can make vacuous statements also).

You are correct that Sam Harris asserts this, as does Aristotle.

Not Aristotle. His position is different. It's not "wellbeing" he advocates, but "blessedness," eudaemonia, in Greek. And he has definite ideas about teleology to support his conception of "blessedness." Sam Harris is trying to avoid that sort of work altogether (harsher reading)...or maybe (charitable reading) actually doesn't understand the problem himself, and is honestly confused.

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "The concept of eudaimonia, a key term in ancient Greek moral philosophy, is standardly translated as “happiness” or “flourishing” and occasionally as “well-being.” If you think Harris is aiming at something fundamentally different, I don't believe you understand Harris.

You are also correct that this leaves open the idea of what "wellbeing" is.

That's a terminal problem, much worse than if he had just claimed "wellbeing" was just one thing. If we don't know what "wellbeing" might actually turn out to be, because it's fluid, there's not any way of orienting any kind of moral precepts toward it. We're now completely without a clue, when it comes to applied ethics.

Again, a vacuous assertion. I suggest that starting with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (i.e. Flow) might be helpful.

First, I would assert that the concept of "wellbeing" is similar to the concept of "health". It is difficult if impossible to define exactly what health is, it is an umbrella term, but that does not make the term vacuous.

But "health" is an empirical state. It can be judged purely empirically, and has no moral element. Harris is looking for a way to say that morality can still exis, and morality is about values. So that's not actually a reasonable analogy. It must surely be clear to anyone that whether or not a person is "healthy" is not in any way a description of the nature of his moral condition. I'm quite staggered that he hasn't noticed such an obvious flaw in his logic.

As statements of fact, both health and well-being have empirical aspects without moral elements. What makes them moral is if we say we "ought" to pursue health and well-being. Is this the normative statement which makes them moral constructs.

Second, the discussion of well being is wide ranging. For example, you can look into the current "happiness studies". You can look into Buddhist psychology which often focuses on well being as well as Stoicism.

Yes, that's the point: many people have very different accounts of "wellbeing." And that's what we find out when we pay attention to the "discussion" that's out there, rather than glossing it all over, Harris-style.

Buddhists do not think pain and pleasure should matter: only detachment from both does. The Stoics have something somewhat similar, in that they are fatalistic about pain and pleasure, but for different reasons. J.S. Mill, on the other hand, insisted nobody is indifferent to pain and pleasure. Hedonists hold that pain and pleasure are pretty much the total story of why we do what we do. Randians and Nietzscheans would say that the pains and pleasures of certain people matter more than the pains and pleasures of others. Humanitarians argue that my pain and pleasure are to be secondary to other people's pain and pleasure. And Kant said that all of that was irrelevant, and morality could not be decided on any consequentialist grounds...it gets really messy, when you drill down into the details.

This is largely just skeptical non-sense. There are actually a significant number of people who believe the earth is flat. OMG, diversity of opinion. How can we know? I guess we just need to go home.

I think what you may be missing is this. Buddhism and Stoicism are unique in that they have a psychological component, if you don't like them... throw them out and replace it with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy from psychological research instead (spoiler alert: it is very consistent with Stoicism).

Yes, it is messy when we drill down into the details... as all consequentialist ethics are. That doesn't make it an inappropriate definition or objective for morality.

So, once you accept the definition of morality...

Which one? So far, we're still on the horns of several incompatible ones.

There's a history to this problem, and if I may stretch your patience, I'll lay it out for you. (If you don't care, you can ignore from here down.)

It really starts with the Enlightenment project of trying to ground ethics without reference to ideology -- universally, if you will. Kant's the first really ambitious practitioner of it, and then Mill, and then others. The project got additional urgency in the early modern period, when people like Dewey took it up, hoping to resolve problems of getting immigrants to play ball within a single polity by appealing to an attenuated common ground. Dewey thought that it might be located in "the Judeo-Christian consensus"; but he was only trying to reconcile ideologies like Judaism, Christianity and Eastern Orthodoxy. He thought that by appealing to a sort of "lowest common moral denominator," he could get everyone to agree to be good Americans.

That all fell apart in late modernity. But the '60s, it was becoming clear that it was not a "Judeo-Christian" consensus that was going to be needed, but a very broad way of pulling together those participants with Atheists, Buddhists, Islamists, Hindus, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, animists, Socialists, Capitalists, Wiccans, agnostics...and all sorts of other ideologies.

So by the time the current crop of ethicists started writing, it was already recognized by all of them that the "lowest common denominator" idea was doomed. What they work on now is a problem they call "irreconcilable (or "incommensurable") pluralism": namely, the question, "What do you do when you have to arrange political situations among constituents in a situation where there are certain to be winners and losers, those who are made happy and those that are made not so happy, by whatever you do?" And that's a much more serious problem for moral philosophy, and thus for applied ethics. It has to settle all our political, legal, social and administrative arrangements, not just our differences of theory. It can't be brushed away with the kind of solution that Dewey et al proposed.

Sam Harris is lost back in the early modern period. He's not pushing for a "Judeo-Christian" consensus, like Dewey was, but rather an entirely secular consensus, based on an undefined and undefinable idea called "wellbeing." But Harris is not an ethicist by training, and doesn't realize he's fighting a battle that was tried and lost fifty years ago. There really isn't a serious or credible ethicist in the academy today who is contesting the idea that irreconcilable pluralism is now the right way to understand the problem of moral legitimation. From Habermas to Rawls, to Rorty, Margolis and Singer, nobody is still thinking Harris's kind of solution is plausible.

I don't doubt that Mr. Harris has some smarts in some areas. He's got some degrees. But in ethics, he's way over his head, and doesn't know it. He's misunderstood the whole problem.

[Immanuel Can]

"Wellbeing" is not the incontestable, universal sort of term they want you to believe it is.

The point is, it does work, and it is the incontestible, universal sort of term they want us to believe it is (see I can make vacuous statements also).

Not vacuous. Empirical. You can see it doesn't work, because different worldviews and belief systems have radically different types of "wellbeing" in view. That's not hard to check. It's actually so manifestly true that, as I was saying at the end of my last message, experts in ethics actually have general agreement about it today. And it's really hard to get those guys to agree about anything.

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "The concept of eudaimonia, a key term in ancient Greek moral philosophy, is standardly translated as “happiness” or “flourishing” and occasionally as “well-being.” If you think Harris is aiming at something fundamentally different, I don't believe you understand Harris.

No, Aristotle's very different from Harris. Harris is a "wellbeing" consequentialist, and Aristotle was a big backer of Virtue Ethics which requires at least objective teleology, if not also a belief in gods. In fact, I have the Nichomachean Ethics here, on my shelf, if you want to talk about eudaimonia, and how it was actually used.

Meanwhile, Harris is not at all particularly hard to understand. He's a popularist and in ethics, not an expert. There's not a lot of difficulty in getting all he has to say in that field -- he's not a rich resource. But I've also noticed, from his many interviews and speaking engagements, he's exceedingly good at talking with his eyes closed.

As statements of fact, both health and well-being have empirical aspects

No, because "well" is defined by worldview, and is not a universal concept, like "health" is. But you're right when you add,

What makes them moral is if we say we "ought" to pursue health and well-being. Is this the normative statement which makes them moral constructs.

Right. So even health, if we say you "ought" to seek to be healthy (as opposed to eating whatever you want, or smoking, say) is to add a moral imperative to a concept that does not have one inherently.

Who is telling us we "owe-it" (the meaning of "ought") to keep ourselves healthy, if we'd rather smoke or eat pork pies all day? From whence comes a duty not to treat our own bodies as we see fit, and live on whatever terms, and for whatever length, we might happen to wish? To whom are we "owing" this obligation?

You can see the problem, I'm sure.

How can we know? I guess we just need to go home.

That's a natural reaction. But it's not the only alternative. We could back the discussion up one step, and argue about whether or not there is an objective basis for morality, as well as for a universal concept of "wellness." But secular persons don't usually want us to do that, because when they go drilling down, they find nothing. Their own worldview does not furnish them with a basis for ethics...and that's precisely why so much in modern moral theory is nihilistic, "end-of-ethics" type of stuff, or raw pragmatism that simply refuses to seek any legitimative basis. Secular moral theory is in trouble. Nobody knows how to make it rational.

Yes, it is messy when we drill down into the details... as all consequentialist ethics are. That doesn't make it an inappropriate definition or objective for morality.

No, you're right: the variations of opinion don't provide us with certain grounds to reject all Consequentialisms (there are various ones, ranging from Utilitarianism, to Egoism, to Pragmatism, to some Feminist ethics, and so on, all differing on the correct "consequence" for us to pursue); but likewise, we have no reason at all to think the right answer lies within the field of the Consequentalisms.

Meanwhile, the fact that Consequentialism itself isn't just one, clear thing adds an additional complication to the problem. Which "Consequentialism" should we be backing?

[Ginkgo]

In other words, you are saying that my sense of well-being is delusional. I could just as easily say your sense of well-being is also delusional since it is based on a myth.

You could believe that. Sure. And if your worldview were true, you would be right, just as I would be right about you if mine is right. So the primary question, of course, is what's ultimately true: ontology precedes ethics.

However, the point for the present argument is this: your "wellbeing" definition is not one that could ever be adequate from my perspective, and you can see why. You would be asking me to believe that a person who was happily marching to Judgment and a lost eternity was "well," and obviously, from my perspective, that could never be right. We are not both convinced of some facile idea of "wellbeing" that generalizes to all.

The problem is much larger, though. I'm not alone in having a view of wellbeing irreconcilable with yours. You would also never satisfy a Buddhist or Hindu definition of "wellbeing" either. For them, reality is a source of soul-suffering ("samsara"), and a realm of delusion ("maya"). Only through detachment, the denial of pleasure and pain, and anything else that ties you through desire to this world can you "be well" in their terms. So your feeling of being well in the here and now is actually a signal of you drifting away from your enlightenment, and away from your nirvana or the dissolution of your consciousness into the transcendent. They would thus never call you "well."

A polytheist, an Islamist, a Zoroastrian, an Idealist...there are many perspectives from which your idea of "wellbeing" would not ever be accepted as adequate. So the big point is this: there's no answer to the problems of morality or meaning by appealing to the idea that everybody has the same sense of "wellbeing." Very obviously, they do not. So we can't appeal to "wellbeing" as a common orientation point. People disagree fundamentally about what it means.

KLewchuck thinks "wellbeing" answers the bell here. Sam Harris tries the same routine. But as you can see, that doesn't really answer anything.

We're back to this question: what's "wellbeing"?

You ought to read uwot's Bertrand Russell comment, it sums it up nicely.

[Immanuel Can]

You ought to read uwot's Bertrand Russell comment, it sums it up nicely.

I did. I don't speak with uwot, though. He seems determined to pick a fight with God, and it's above my pay grade to step into a fight like that. Personally, I would wish him repentance on that, but you can't make a man do what he doesn't want to do.

As for Russell, he is said to be a great mathematician. But I can tell you he understood next to nothing about faith.

This is the truth: back in my early university days, we Christians used to put a copy of his book "Why I Am Not A Christian" in our book displays, so that people would ask about it. It's so easy to debunk Russell's ideas, we actually relished him as a springboard to make better arguments.

So no...not terribly impressed.