That means that the same object can be a good chair and a bad knife. It isn't just good or bad full stop. Having a certain set of mental states might make one a good believer (because the states are responsive to the evidence in appropriate ways), but that doesn't by itself make you a good person. Similarly, a set of actions might make you a good agent. This program won't really get an answer of what makes a good person unless you have some notion of what it is to be a person (which of course could be very different from being a good human being - I take it that "human being" is a kind of biological concept, while "person" is a concept that could apply to animals, robots, or aliens just as well as to humans).
Note - none of this is about what anyone wants. It's just about the meanings of words. It might be the case that no one wants knives, but certain things will still be good or bad knives. Or as Alanis Morrisette sings, you might have 10,000 very good spoons when all you need is a fork - your desires and subjectivity don't enter into the evaluation at all, just what it is to be a spoon.
Of course, on some further level, we choose certain concepts to be interested in, but once we're interested in the concepts of belief and action, nothing about our wants or needs as individuals or a society is relevant to what makes someone a good or bad believer or agent.
Re: the is-ought gap
Date: 2010-10-16 02:04 am (UTC)Note - none of this is about what anyone wants. It's just about the meanings of words. It might be the case that no one wants knives, but certain things will still be good or bad knives. Or as Alanis Morrisette sings, you might have 10,000 very good spoons when all you need is a fork - your desires and subjectivity don't enter into the evaluation at all, just what it is to be a spoon.
Of course, on some further level, we choose certain concepts to be interested in, but once we're interested in the concepts of belief and action, nothing about our wants or needs as individuals or a society is relevant to what makes someone a good or bad believer or agent.